To ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been drawn to the case of William Moss, of 84, Oakland Street, Widnes, who had a child born to him on the 16th September, 1907, which was registered on 30th September, 1907; whether he is aware that when registering the birth of the child no form of declaration of conscientious objection to vaccination was handed to him, although registrars all over the country had been instructed to hand Form A., Part 2, to persons registering births in the case of all children born after 31st August, 1907; whether he is aware that Mr. Moss applied to the same registrar for a form on 6th January, 1908, and was refused on the ground that the forms had been called in, although in other similar cases registrars had issued to the applicant a duplicate vaccination schedule; whether he is aware that Mr. Moss applied to the local magistrates on the same date, and was refused exemption on the ground that he had no form, notwithstanding the fact that the Vaccination Act, 1907, permits any kind of declaration, printed, typed, or written, provided it is in the form set out in the Act; and whether he will give the Widnes vaccination officer instructions not to prosecute this man for the non-vaccination of his child, seeing that he has done all in his power to comply with the Act, but has been prevented partly through the action of the registrar and partly through the action of the local justices. (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) I have made inquiry with regard to this matter. I find that the registrar acted in accordance with a strict interpretation of the instructions contained in a circular issued

To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, what have the 31,942 beerhouses in existence on the 1st January, 1905, contributed to the compensation fund in the financial years 1905–6–7–8 respectively. (Answered by Mr. Asquith.)

To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland if he will state who was responsible for the attack made on the Clonguish band at Newtonforbes, on Saturday 7th December, 1907; whether he is aware that the police, on this occasion, assaulted men, women, and children promiscuously, injuring several old women badly; and will he direct an inquiry to be made into the conduct of the official responsible on the occasion. (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The police authorities inform me that no attack was made by the police on the Clonguish band on the occasion referred to. The bandsmen and their followers were most disorderly, and the police, in pursuance of their duty, caused them to move on and go to their band room. The occasion was two o'clock a.m. on Sunday, 8th December. The police committed no assaults, and no one—man, woman, or child—was injured.

To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that acute differences of opinion have arisen in the Lisnaskea rural district as to the suitability of a site selected by the council, which is alleged to be inconvenient of access and likely to be a cause of pollution to the Brookeboro waterworks; and will he suggest to the Local Government Board the propriety of holding a sworn inquiry and refusing to sanction any loan for the acquisition of the site if found unsuitable. (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) I am informed that the hon. Member is correct in stating that there are acute differences of opinion among the members of the rural district council, as to the suitability of the site proposed for the new burial ground. The Local Government Board would be prepared to hold an inquiry in the matter, if the council should require a loan to defray the cost. The rural district council have, however, definitely stated that they do not consider a loan I necessary.

To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that in the year 1902 a free grant of £8,000 was allocated for the improvement of Liscannor harbour; that the Board of Works appointed Messrs. G. A. Watson and Company, Limited, contractors for the execution of the works; that, notwithstanding that the County Council of Clare are liable for a guarantee of 1½ per cent. for four years on the contract price, the Board of Works did not allow the county council to interfere in the plans, specifications, or contract for the works; that the contractors were allowed a period of two and a half years to complete their contract; and that by the contract four new berths were to be provided, the bed of the harbour deepened and rendered safe for vessels, the sea wall to be thoroughly pinned, and proper accommodation and landing-places provided for fishing boats; and whether, seeing that though the works should have been completed more than a year ago they are still only half completed, and consequently a considerable loss to the harbour dues will occur during the coming spring and summer by reason of the state of the harbour, he can state what steps the Board of Works are now taking to complete the matters necessary to make the harbour safe. (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) The facts are not precisely as stated in the Question. The grant in the case was £8,500. It was approved in 1904. Only two new berths were specified, and new accommodation for fishing was not mentioned. The work is more than half finished, everything being complete except the excavation. The Board of Works, who are, under the Marine Works Act, solely responsible for the design and execution of the works, have furnished me with the following information. It is the case that the date fixed for completion, 30th September, 1906, is more than a year past, and that a substantial part of the work remains unfinished. The reason is that the contractors failed, and their affairs went into the hands of a receiver, who has so far declined to complete the work. The Board are negotiating with a view to taking over the completion of the work themselves. The Board do not think that the dues of the harbour are much affected by its unfinished state. The contractors who have failed were the owners of the quarries which supplied almost all the trade, and the Board are informed that the quarries are closed. There would therefore be a small amount of dues in any case. There is little or no fishing. The contribution by the county council does not begin to be payable till the works are complete.

To ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether, in his intended legislation this session, he proposes to afford any relief to former occupiers restored to their holdings with the status of future tenants who are at present entirely excluded from the benefits of the Act of 1881. (Answered by Mr. Birrell.) This question will be fully considered in connection with the legislation which it is intended to introduce for the purpose of amending the Irish Land Acts. I cannot at present say anything more definite on the subject.

To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he can say what number of females were delivered of illegitimate children in the workhouses or infirmaries in England and Wales during 1907; and if he can also say approximately how many of these were thus confined for the first time. (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) I am unable to give the information indicated in the Question.

To ask the President of the Local Government Board if he will state the average amount of rates per head of the population in England and Wales collected in the years 1879–1899 and the last known year, respectively; and the grants in aid per head contributed from the Exchequer during the same years. (Answered by Mr. John Burns.) I am not sure whether my hon. friend desires particulars as to each year between 1879 and 1899, but perhaps the following statement, which is complied from the summaries of the Local Taxation Returns (England and Wales) for the years 1903–4 and 1904–5, will answer his purpose. It shows the average amounts per head of estimated population of the public rates and Exchequer grants received by the local authorities of England and Wales in the year 1879–80, and in every fifth succeeding year to 1904–5, inclusive. Sums paid by the Board of Education directly to the managers of voluntary schools are not included.

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he can state what was the estimated excess of births over deaths in Scotland during the year 1907. (Answered by Mr. Sinclair.) The excess of births over deaths registered in Scotland in 1907 was 51,522.

To ask the President of the Board of Trade whether he can say how far advanced the Departmental Committee on Railway Accounts is, and when the Report will be issued. (Answered by Mr. Lloyd-George.) I understand that the Departmental Committee on Railway Accounts and Statistical Returns is still engaged in hearing evidence, and is not expected to report for some months.

To ask the Secretary to the Treasury whether his attention has been called to the remarks of the Secretary to the Civil Service Commission at the Boy Clerks' Friendly Society's meeting, held on 12th December, 1907, in which he deplored the policy of employing boy clerks on a large scale; and in view of the remarks of this official, can he say why large numbers are still being employed, of whom only a small proportion can gain permanent employment. (Answered by Mr. Runciman.) The remarks of the Secretary to the Civil Service Commission at the meeting in question had no official or authoritative character, and expressed no more than his personal opinion. The question of reducing the number of boy clerks is under consideration, but no decision has yet been arrived at.

To ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will state the nature of the instructions prescribed to the surveyors of taxes in the matter of applications for abatement of 3d. in the pound; and if he can see his way to recommend some mitigation of the inquisitiveness of these agents, consistent with due protection of public revenue. (Answered by Mr. Asquith.) It is the duty of surveyors of taxes to verify all claims for relief in respect of earned income and, inasmuch as the relief can only be granted upon proof that the total income of the applicant does not exceed £2,000 per annum, it is necessary for the surveyor to be furnished with full particulars before he is in a position to certify the claim. The Board of Inland Revenue are satisfied that their surveyors have limited themselves to such inquiries as are necessary for the protection of the Revenue.

To ask the Secretary of State for War whether his attention has been called to the case of Mary Deegan, of Annacotty, county Limerick, a widow of over seventy years of age and in feeble health, who claims to have her son discharged from the Army under the Widows Act, the said son, Michael Deegan, being a private in the Munster Fusiliers now in India, her claim being founded on the fact that her son is her only support, and that her claim for his discharge was conceded some time since, but for some reason which she cannot understand his discharge is not being proceeded with; and whether taking into account the position of this poor woman her claim will now be allowed and her son given back to her. (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) This man enlisted in September, 1905, and was sent to India last September. He is in receipt of service pay and could well afford to send money home to his mother. The mother applied in August, 1907, for his discharge, and the matter was referred to the general officer commanding concerned, who has full authority under the King's Regulations to deal with such cases, and with whoso decision the Army Council does not propose to interfere. There is no such Act as the Widows Act.

To ask the Secretary of State for War under what circumstances men of the Territorial Force are liable for thirty days training under Section 15 (2) (a) of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act, 1907. (Answered by Mr. Secretary Haldane.) The object of Sub-section (2) (a) of Section 15 is to enable a unit under exceptional circumstances to train for a longer period than that laid down in Sub-section (1). The sub-section follows the wording of Section 17 of the Militia Act, 1882, with the substitution of thirty days for fifty-six. The provision for such extension of training has been found to work well in practice, and the scientific branches of the Militia have frequently availed themselves of its advantages. It must be remembered that the proviso as to dispensing with individual attendances applies to this sub-section. Further, it can only be brought into operation by an Order in Council.

To ask the Prime Minister, if he is aware that the cost of flour in Sheffield, Leeds, and other large cities, has increased during the past year by from 8s. to 9s. per sack, inflicting thereby an increase of from 20 to 30 per cent. in the cost of the loaf baked at home, usual in Yorkshire; and what steps he has taken, is taking, or, in view of the anticipated further rise, proposes to take to develop the sources of supply of wheat and flour in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere under the flag, so as to free this prime necessary of life from the manipulations of foreigners to the detriment of our own people. (Answered by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.) The hon. and gallant Member appears to regard me as being in some way responsible for the failure of the harvest to which the increase in the price of flour is due. I know of no method of counteracting such failure; nor do I understand how the imposition of a duty on foreign corn would bring relief to those who are suffering from the high price of flour.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War, whether those who joined the new Territorial Army, and had previously been members of the Volunteer Force, would be eligible for the long service medal on the same basis as if they had continued service in the Volunteer Force.

The matter is under consideration, and it is hoped will be settled shortly.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for War whether an officer who has not yet completed his three years service in the Volunteer Force is entitled to resign his commission on 31st March (commencement of the new Army Scheme), without forfeiting the grant of £20 made to him when he joined.

An officer in the Volunteer Force retiring under the circumstances stated in the Question will not forfeit the outfit allowance of £20.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India, whether the evidence of the officials of the Government of India before the Decentralisation Commission is to be taken in camerâ; if so, for what reason, seeing that the evidence of the officials of the local governments has been taken in public; and whether this change of method has received his sanction.

I am aware that a part of the evidence to be taken by the Decentralisation Committee will be given in private, being of a confidential nature. This has been arranged between the Chairman of the Commission and the Government of India, and I see no reason for objecting, if indeed, I have any power.

I beg to ask the Under Secretary of State for the Colonies if he has any official information showing that unresisting Zulus have been shot and flogged since Dinizulu's arrest; and if he will inquire into the matter at once.

Five natives were tried and sentenced to be flogged, as I stated in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for Nottingham East on Thursday last. The official information received shows that two natives or perhaps three were shot when escaping from the police, but the account of the occurrence also states that by the side of each of the two dead bodies were found magazine rifles with the magazines charged and the cut-offs open. The apparent discrepancy will be inquired into.

asked whether it was not a fact that men were flogged to obtain evidence, and whether, in view of the professions made at the time of the South African war in regard to Boer cruelty, the Government would not take steps in this matter.

said he had given all the information he had received.

asked whether there was any indication of the motives for flogging.

No; but it is strongly denied by the Natal Government that it was done for the purpose of extracting evidence.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give me the names of the people who ordered and were present at the flogging?

I think I should like to have an opportunity of considering that.

If you prefer to conceal it, do so.

I think the House Will admit that I do endeavour to obtain information that is desired.

asked as to the number of lashes inflicted.

was understood to say careful inquiry was being made, but there was no evidence of more than the ordinary amount of flogging during military operations.

I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if the Government has any further information to give the House as to how much longer martial law is to be allowed to prevail in certain districts in Natal.

May I also ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the proclamation of martial law in Natal is still in force; whether there is any state of war in that Colony; whether the ordinary criminal courts of the Colony are open for the trial of offenders; and whether he will press upon the Government of the Colony that the proclamation, if still in force, should be at once withdrawn, and that unless this is done His Majesty's Government may be constrained to disallow the Act of Indemnity.

Martial law, so far as I am aware, remains in force in Zululand despite the view of the Governor and the Secretary of State that it is not required. No date has yet been fixed for its withdrawal. The military forces which were called out at the time of the proclamation of martial law have been demobilised and the ordinary courts are open. Lord Elgin's opinion upon this question was made quite clear in his telegram of 27th December, published in the last Blue-Book, and my noble friend does not at present desire to make any further observations upon it. His Majesty's Government, as the Prime Minister stated, prefer not to discuss at this juncture so serious a step as that of advising His Majesty to signify disallowance of an Act of Indemnity.

asked if the Governor was not also commander-in-chief in the Colony, and being technically in command of the Imperial forces would it not be open for him to say that they shall not be used in this devil's work.

reply was inaudible.

I beg to ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if he can state the circumstances under which Mr. Jellicoe has refused to continue the defence of Dinizulu; and whether obstacles were placed in Mr. Jellicoe's way in preparing his defence. The following Questions on the same subject also appeared on the paper.

To ask the Under - Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he has any information if, before declining to proceed as counsel for Dinizulu, Mr. Jellicoe presented to the Governor a written protest regarding the proceedings; and whether His Majesty's Government will lay the protest upon the Table of the House, together with further Papers in continuation of Cd. 3888.

To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies if, since the withdrawal of Mr. Jellicoe, His Majesty's Government has taken any steps to secure a fair trial for Dinizulu.

To ask the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether his attention has been called to the fact that the learned counsel who went out to Natal specially to defend Dinizulu has retired from the case; and can he inform the House of the reason for his retirement.

With the permission of the House and for convenience I will answer all the Questions upon this subject together. I have no information as to the circumstances which led to Mr. Jellicoe's retirement from the conduct of Dinizulu's defence except that contained in the public Press. I have, of course, read Mr. Jellicoe's statement, and it will receive close attention from the Secretary of State. But the Governor of Natal, in whose judgment His Majesty's Government have great confidence, is at present in Zululand upon a tour of personal inspection to which importance is attached, and in the absence of a full report from him it would not be wise to form an opinion upon Mr. Jellicoe's allegations. The fact, however, that Mr. Jellicoe has retired from the case left His Majesty's Government in some doubt as to the precise means by which full legal assistance was to be secured to Dinizulu, and a telegram was on Monday sent to the Governor upon that point. I shall hope to be able to give the House more information next week.

I beg to ask Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer whether he will consider the expediency of establishing a graduated receipt stamp.

As I informed my hon. friend last Monday, all suggestions on the subject of taxation receive my most careful consideration.

Does the right hon. Gentleman exclude his sympathy in regard to this particular proposal?

No, Sir; I am sympathetic towards any new source of taxation which would increase the revenue.

Can the right hon. Gentleman favour me with a definition of official sympathy?

I beg to ask the Prime Minister if he is aware that, according to the Fiftieth Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, there was an increase in 1905–6 over the preceding year of no less than £7,837,156 in the profits derived from investments abroad; and whether he will consider the desirability of so defending the productive industries of the United Kingdom as to check the expulsion of British capital abroad, in the interests of labour and employment in this country.

My right hon. friend has asked me to reply to this Question. I have studied the figures referred to, which are very remarkable, with great interest. A large part of the increase probably represents greater productivity of existing investments, and it may also to some extent be due to a closer collection of income-tax on foreign investments generally. In so far as it represents income on British capital newly invested abroad, I by no means follow the hon. Member in regarding such capital as having been "expelled" from the United Kingdom to the detriment of labour and employment here, seeing that it in fact represents the proceeds of the sale of British products in foreign and Colonial markets: but the general question is too wide to argue exhaustively in a Parliamentary Answer.

According to this Report of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, are not the figures given as receipts from investments abroad?

Investments abroad take very largely the form of products of British industry exported abroad.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will say how many persons were committed to prison in England and Wales during 1907 in default of payment of a fine imposed for breach of a bye-law or a similar regulation; and how many such persons were boys and girls under the age of sixteen.

The numbers were 8,521 males and 2,711 females. Of these 159 males and two females were under the age of sixteen.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state what punishments other than corporal punishment, are inflicted in reformatories, industrial schools, and truant schools respectively.

The punishments in question are practically the same in the three classes of schools and consist of:—(a) Forfeiture of rewards and privileges, or loss of rank previously obtained by good conduct; (b) Dietary punishment; (c) Confinement for a limited time in a light room or a light cell. There are, of course, other ways of reproving children which a judicious superintendent may order, for example, extra drill or less pleasant though necessary work.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will state what was the number of cases of corporal punishment in reformatories, industrial schools, and truant schools, respectively, during 1907; in how many cases the child was a girl; in how many cases the child was under eight; and whether he will also state the kind of corporal punishment permitted, and the person by whom it may be ordered.

The punishment of whipping can be inflicted with the birch rod, by the superintendent, or, in some cases, by the head teacher; and there may be punishment on the palm of the hand, with the school cane, or, in Scotland, with a leather tawse. For many years the rules sanctioned for girls' schools have not authorised the infliction of corporal punishment; and even in old-established schools, such punishment is only inflicted in exceptional cases as a last resort, after due consideration by the managers. Children under eight years of age very rarely need corporal punishment, and when it is necessary it is very slight. It would be impossible without much labour to obtain a complete return of the cases of corporal punishment in these schools; and I do not think such a return is called for. The schools are conducted by responsible bodies of managers, who must be allowed some discretion in dealing with the children and young persons under their care; and I have no reason to think that there is any unnecessary use of corporal punishment.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the number of boys and girls who were under detention in industrial schools on 1st January, 1908, and how many of these were under six and between six and ten; and if he will say at what age the boys are separated from the girls, and what female care is subsequently provided for the boys.

The number of children in industrial schools in England and Wales on the 1st January, 1908, was 11,508 (8,789 boys and 2,719 girls) of whom 102 (48 boys and 54 girls) were under six years of age, and 1,187 (755 boys and 432 girls) were between six and ten. There is now only one mixed school in England, and even there the boys and girls are in separate class-rooms and play-grounds, and are housed in separate, though contiguous buildings. In all shore schools for boys there is provision for female care whether in the form of matrons or trained nurses.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state for the last year for which the figures are available the total number of cases reported to the police in Great Britain of firing at the person and at property; and in how many cases did the police fail to secure convictions.

No, Sir; the information at my disposal does not enable me to state separately the number of offences of firing at the person and at property.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can state the total number of murders in Great Britain within the last five years for which statistics are available; the number of cases in which prosecutions followed; the number of cases for which no person was put on trial; and the number of cases in which accused persons were acquitted.

My information extends only to England and Wales; any question as to Scotland should be addressed to the Secretary for Scotland. The total number of murders known to the police during the five years 1902–6 was 751, including 267 cases of infanticide. The number of persons prosecuted for murder by the Director of Public Prosecutions was 623; this is not quite the total number of such prosecutions, a few cases having been undertaken by the prosecuting solicitor for the City of Liverpool. The number acquitted at their trial was sixty-nine.

In view of the fact that these figures show that a large number of murderers are running loose in this country, would it be fair on the part of an hon. Member of this House to allege that the English people are a race of murderers and assassins?

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now favourably consider the granting to the members of the Metropolitan police force one day's rest in seven, and accordingly make provision in his Estimates to enable him to put it into operation this year.

I am sorry that the financial difficulties in the way of this proposal which I mentioned last session have in no way diminished. Having regard to the large cost of the proposed change and to the present conditions of pay and service I do not think it would be right by simple executive action to place so large an additional burden on London ratepayers. Moreover, such action must inevitably affect the conditions of service and the pay in all the police forces in the country. I think therefore that the question cannot be confined to London and that careful examination of all its bearings would have to precede any decision.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether any application for permission to raise money under the Licensing Act of 1904 for the purpose of providing compensation has been made to the Home Office; and whether in any case the Home Office has refused to allow the loan to be spread over a longer period than one year; and, if so, on what grounds such refusal has been made.

I have received and granted several applications for permission to borrow on the security of the Compensation Funds under the Licensing Act 1904. I have required the loans sanctioned during the past year to be repaid at or about the end of the present year, that is to say at latest out of the compensation levy to be made in 1908. In view of pending legislation I have thought it desirable to avoid so far as possible creating liabilities which would continue beyond the date when any amendment of the law may take effect.

I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the amount levied upon and paid by the trade in respect of the licences extinguished under the operation of the Licensing Act of 1904.

Full information on this subject is given in the Annual Volumes of Licensing Statistics. The Volume for 1907 is not yet completed, but I can give the following figures as approximately correct:—In the three years 1905, 1906, 1907, the compensation authorities in England and Wales have received from charges imposed on existing on licences under the Act of 1904 a total sum of about £3,289,163. Out of this a total of about £2,310,960 has been paid away in compensation for licences extinguished.

asked if this money had not actually been paid by the consumers of intoxicants.

reply was inaudible.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether he has considered the provisions of the Midwives Act,. 1902, which forbid the practices habitually and for gain, of midwifery after 1st January, 1910, by any woman not certified under the Act; whether he is aware that much doubt exists whether it will be found possible then and in future for trained certified midwives to earn an adequate livelihood by the practice of their profession in rural districts where population and births are few in number; and whether in view of the importance of proper care for mother and child, and the close proximity of the date after which un skilled attendance is forbidden, he is prepared to introduce further legislation charging the supervising authorities, as created by the Act of 1902, with the duty and the power of securing for all cases of childbirth within their area such efficient nursing as the Act requires, but for which no provision is made.

The attention of the Government has been called to this matter, which is primarily one for the Lord President of the Council. I understand that the whole subject is receiving his consideration, and that he is in communication with the Central Midwives Board with regard to it.

I beg to ask the President of the Local Government Board whether his attention has been called to the Report on the Rating of Land Values in Queensland; and whether the Valuation Bill mentioned in the King's Speech will include provisions for the separate valuation of land and buildings; and, if so, when he proposes to introduce it.

My attention has been called to the Report referred to in the Question. The proposals of the Government on the subject of valuation will be explained to the House when the Bill is introduced. I am not able at the present time to fix a date for its introduction.

I beg to ask the Secretary to the Local Government Board in connection with the petition from twenty-two Metropolitan borough councils on the subject of the appointment of returning officers for Parliamentary elections in the county of London, if he will state how many of the Metropolitan borough councils were in favour of the proposal in Clause 6 of the Elections and Registration (London) Bill, that the clerk of the county council should be returning officer for Parliamentary elections in the County of London, and how many prayed that the town clerks of each Metropolitan borough council should be appointed to that office.

The petition referred to, which was presented in October, 1906, did not ask that the clerk of the County Council should be the returning officer at Parliamentary elections in London, and I am not aware that the proposal to form London into one Parliamentary borough was then before the Metropolitan borough councils. It did ask that the town clerks of the borough councils should be the returning officers for Parliamentary elections. If effect were given to the proposal in Clause 6 of the Bill, elections in the Parliamentary borough of London would be conducted in the same manner as in the case of elections of County Councillors. At the latter elections it is the practice to appoint the town clerks as deputy returning officers, and if, as no doubt would be the case, this practice were extended to Parliamentary elections I apprehend that the object of the petitioners would in substance be attained.

Did not the right hon. Gentleman himself officially state that twenty-two out of the twenty-nine councils petitioned in favour of Clause 6?

The hon. Member is not entitled to make quotations from speeches and raise a question on them.

But is it not the fact that the clause referred to does exactly what these councils desired?

That is a matter the hon. Member can decide for himself by reading the Bill.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education if he has received an appeal from the managers of Bylchau school, Denbighshire, and a petition from more than ten ratepayers in the district, under Section 8(1) of the Education Act, 1902, against the proposal to erect a new provided school; if he is aware that, although the local education authority affixed a notice to the church door stating that an inquiry would be held, the Board have granted personal interviews to those who desire the new school and have given no opportunity for those who oppose it to be heard; and if he will state what action he proposes to take.

The Answer to the first paragraph is in the affirmative. I am not aware of any notice stating that an inquiry would be held, and I think the hon. Member must be referring to the public notice which the local education authority are required to give under Section 8 of the Act, which dealt only with the proposal to provide a new school, and as far as I know made no suggestion of any inquiry. No interview has taken place with regard to the necessity of this school and none has been asked for on this question.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education, whether, if a training college is removed from the list of recognised colleges in consequence of failure to comply with the new regulations as to admission of students, it will still be possible for students attending it to enter for the examination of students in training colleges held by the Board, and to be recognised by the Board subsequently for professional purposes as fully as if they had been at a training college in receipt of grants.

A training college which fails to comply with the new regulation requiring students to be admitted without regard to religious belief or social antecedents will be liable to removal from the list of colleges recognised as eligible to receive Government grants. It may, however, after removal from the list, continue to be accepted by the Board as a place suitable for the training of teachers for public elementary scohols if the Board are satisfied as to its educational efficiency, and students attending it may in that case be admitted to the Board's examination on the same conditions as students who are trained in recognised colleges, and will be eligible in that way to become certificated teachers, though no grants can be paid on their account. Arrangements will be made, when occasion arises, for the establishment of a list of certified training colleges (on the lines of the Board's list of efficient secondary schools) which would comprise all the training colleges both grant-earning and non-grant-earning, recognised as efficient by the Board of Education.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education if he can state how many local education authorities have passed resolutions under Article 43 of the Regulations for Secondary Schools; what schools have been the subject of these resolutions; what are the conditions which the Board has been asked in each case to waive; and what action the Board has taken in response to the requests of the local authorities.

A considerable number of resolutions passed by local education authorities under Article 13 of the Regulations for Secondary Schools have reached, and are still reaching, the Board of Education. The total number of authorities from whom such resolutions have been received is thirty-six. Some of these resolutions have already been considered by the Board, and they have thought fit in the case of fourteen schools to waive one or more of the conditions imposed by the new Regulations for 1907. They have not thought fit to waive any of the conditions referred to in the resolutions as regards three schools at Southampton, Bury, and Peterborough, respectively. The greater number of the resolutions are still under consideration, and a full return showing for each school the articles which the Board were asked to waive and their decision as regards each article will be laid before Parliament when the process is complete. It is hoped that the return will be ready in the course of April.

I beg to ask the President of the Board of Education what progress has been made in the constitution and appointment of an Advisory Committee for the arrangement and organisation of the art collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum at South Kensington.

The preliminary arrangements for the constitution and organisation of an Advisory Council for the art museum have been completed, and Treasury sanction has now been obtained to the proposals. The matter is, however, complicated by the fact that in planning and carrying out the various Departmental changes needed to give to the new council its proper degree of responsibility, regard must also be had to the new circumstances that will arise out of the impending transfer to the Whitehall offices of that branch of the Board's offices which is now located at South Kensington in order to provide that arrangements for the conduct of the administrative side of the museum may work equally satisfactorily when that transference takes place. As soon as it is possible to introduce the new arrangement, which will also provide for the work of the new Advisory Council, the Board will proceed with the appointment of that body. I hope that this may be possible early in the coming financial year.

On behalf of the hon. Member for East Down, I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether in view of the coming revision of the Irish teachers' salaries, he can state if special consideration will be given to the cases of teachers who left the training colleges in 1898 and 1899 and who obtained first division of second class with special distinction; whether he is aware that, under the rules then in force, these teachers would have received first-class salary after two years highly efficient service, and that, notwithstanding the prospects then held out, and the subsequent good reports of the Board's inspectors, many of these teachers, after a lapse of nine or ten years, are receiving only third-grade salary; and if he can state whether it is the intention of the Commissioners of National Education to promote such of the above-mentioned teachers at present only third-grade, and who are principals of schools with an average of thirty and upwards, to at least second-grade.

The Commissioners of National Education inform me that the class of teachers referred to in the Question has already received full consideration and each particular case has been dealt with on its merits. My predecessor gave full particulars of the matter in reply to a Question put by the hon. Member for South Belfast on 11th April, 1906, and I would refer the hon. Member to that Answer. In reply to the concluding part of the Question, the Commissioners will in due course fully consider the claims to promotion of the teachers referred to.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Congested Districts Board has agreed to supply a beacon light for the pier at Coonana, county Kerry, in accordance with the request of the local fishermen and with the resolution passed by the Cahirciveen District Council.

The Congested Districts Board are making arrangements to place a light on the pier in question.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that under the District Auditors Act of 1879, the fee for auditing the accounts of local authorities in England is fixed by scale, and that under this scale the fee for auditing the accounts of Down County Council would be about £45, whereas the auditing actually costs that body £100, in addition to £30 for the asylum accounts and other sums paid from local sources; whether Irish fees are fixed at random instead of by scale; and whether by Order in Council, or otherwise, he will take steps to reduce the charges for official auditing in Ireland.

I understand that the fees for auditing the accounts of local authorities in England are fixed by scale. I have no information as to what the fee for auditing the accounts of the Down County Council would amount to on that scale, but I am advised that the financial system is so entirely different in the two countries that a scale fixed for Ireland on the same basis would not give adequate remuneration for the work to be done. The Irish audit fees are not fixed at random, but are determined by the Local Government Board after careful consideration of the circumstances in each case, the volume of the work to be done and the time necessarily occupied being the chief factors. The amount of work depends rather on the number of items in the account than on the amounts of those items. It is not proposed to reduce the fees. Any change should rather be in the direction of increasing them, seeing that the fees charged to local authorities are £6,000 a year less than the cost of the audits.

What financial conditions prevail in Ireland which makes it necessary that the fees charged for auditing the accounts of the public bodies should be exactly three times as much as they are in England?

I am told that the number of accounts to be audited is so great that the English scale would not be proper remuneration for the work done.

Why is it that the Irish Local Government Board have authority to make these charges without consulting the local elected bodies who have to pay simply any charge the Board like to make?

It must be borne in mind that even as it is the audit costs £6,000 more than is charged to the local authorities.

Has the attention of the right hon. Gentleman been directed to the decision of the Court of King's Bench that the charges for auditing the accounts should be inclusive of the charges for auditing committee accounts? Is not the Local Government Board making a separate charge for the committee accounts?

Of course the Local Government Board will have to act on that decision.

They are not doing so.

Is it because Ireland is the poorer country?

Will the right hon. Gentleman press the Local Government Board on this matter?

I will certainly call for a full explanation.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland who were the Lords Justices acting on behalf of the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland who, early on 14th January last, reviewed the sentence of imprisonment imposed on Lord Ashtown's gamekeepers late in the afternoon of 13th January at Bally macarbery petty sessions; on whose report or at whose instance did the review of the sentence take place; was the chairman of the bench of magistrates communicated with before the review of the sentence, or was any communication received by the Lords Justices from any magistrate present or from any police officer; whether there is any precedent for the rapidity of the review of the sentence in these cases; and who were the Lords Justices acting in November, 1906, who then reviewed the sentence passed on Graham, one of the gamekeepers sentenced on the 13th ultimo.

The Lords Justices sworn in for the government of Ireland during the absence of the Lord-Lieutenant from 7th January to 1st February, 1908, were the Lord Chancellor, General Lord Grenfell, and Mr. Justice Johnson. The Lord-Lieutenant himself acted in November, 1906, in the case referred to in the concluding part of the Question. As regards the remainder of the Question I can only repeat my Answer of the 5th instant, namely, that it would be contrary to practice and irregular to state the reasons which influence the exercise of the Lord-Lieutenant's prerogative in such cases. I do not therefore propose to make any inquiries as to the information upon which the Lords Justices acted in this case.

Are we to understand that the Lords Justices acted on the ex parte statement of a minority of the bench and never took the trouble to consult the majority?

I understand the Lord Chancellor had all the facts before him and upon them determined to exercise the prerogative in the manner he did.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that an eviction sale took place recently at the Courthouse, Cork, of the interest of Timothy Murphy, of Coolekerane, Millstreet, County Cork, in his holding on the Thompson-Orpen estate, that the tenant offered a reasonable settlement by way of purchase or the giving of a fair rent, and that this was refused by the agent on the estate, Mr. H. D.M. Barton, the Bush, Antrim, and that proceedings for the eviction of the tenant have been since instituted in the High Courts, Dublin, and notice of eviction served on the relieving officer for the Millstreet Union,; and, seeing the danger to the public peace from a harsh eviction of this kind, will he state what steps, if any, he proposes to take in the matter.

The Estates Commissioners inform me that no proceedings for the sale of the estate referred to in the Question have been instituted before them. Assuming, however, that the facts of the case are as stated by the hon. Member, it does not appear that the Government would have any power to interfere. A landlord cannot be prevented from exercising his legal rights under the machinery of the Courts of law.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he has recently received any representations as to the urgent need for drainage in the Scariff district, county Clare; and whether, in view of the loss sustained by the people of the district owing to floods, he will give the matter his immediate attention.

Yes, Sir, but I regret to say that I cannot hold out hopes that the Scariff district will be exceptionally dealt with in priority to other localities similarly affected by floods. Apart from the difficulty of obtaining funds for the purpose, there does not appear to be any local authority vested with legal power to undertake works of improvement on the Scariff river, nor could it be expected that under existing conditions this want could be supplied by the formation of a drainage district under the Drainage Act of 1863.

If the right hon. Gentleman cannot deal with the Scariff district in an exceptional manner, will he consider the advisability of dealing without delay with all those districts where people suffer very severely from floods, and can he hold out any hope that the Government will in the near future do something to prevent the tremendous loss of property and distress caused by the floods? I can assure the right hon. Gentleman I have visited these districts and know it is heartrending to see the sufferings of the people. Something must be done.

I am fully acquainted with the circumstances, and am certain the matter demands full consideration. It is a matter for the Treasury, as the expense would be very large, but it would be cruel for me to hold out any immediate hopes that I shall be able to supply the funds.

Then are the people in the districts affected by floods to understand that no help will be given them? If so, it will be, I am afraid, a serious matter

We are trying to do our very best, but I do not want to hold out false hopes. The Irish Government cannot be expected to do anything immediately, but I should be sorry to have it said nothing is to be done.

If money is not now forthcoming, will the right hon. Gentleman promise an inquiry at once into the extent of the damage done by these floods and the amount required to apply a remedy. It is a very serious matter and has already been pending for years.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether Lord Ashtown or his agent, Mr. Trench, made any charge against Mrs. Minnie Walsh, either of obtaining money under false pretences or of carrying on a criminal correspondence, until after the Member for the division put the Crown in motion. I beg also to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether Lord Ashtown did inform the authorities, previous to 12th September last, that he was in correspondence with Mrs. Minnie Walsh; on which date the county inspector called upon him to explain how he had invited the police to be at Woodlawn church on the night of 31st August; and whether five persons had been invited to go to the church the same night to assist in placing a bomb under the church. I beg further to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether the Crown had a letter in their possession written to a man named Larkin offering him a large sum of money if he would assist in placing a bomb under the church at Woodlawn on the night of 31st August last; and, if so, can he state why it was not produced at the late trial.

My right hon. friend has asked me to answer this and the two following Questions, and with the hon. Member's permission I will answer the three together. Lord Ashtown and his agent, Mr. Trench, from the beginning gave full information to the authorities of the correspondence which was taking place between Mrs. Walsh and them. They did not prefer any direct charge against her. The proceedings against her and her son were taken at my instance upon the information and documents famished by Lord Ashtown and Mr. Trench, in conjunction with those furnished by the hon. Member himself. The first information was given by Lord Ashtown in the month of June last. It is the fact that five persons were invited to assist in blowing up a church; this was done by anonymous letter as proved in evidence at the trial. The letter referred to in the third Question was handed by the hon. Member to the Chief Crown Solicitor's assistant in the police court on 13th December last. The basis of the charges then under investigation consisted of four anonymous letters in precisely similar terms. In order to put this fifth letter in evidence, it would have been necessary to postpone the hearing and have the letter submitted to an expert for examination, and it was not considered necessary to incur the additional expense and delay which would have been involved in adopting this course. No material addition would have been made to the evidence against the accused by this letter.

May I ask the right hon. Gentleman what was the date on which Lord Ashtown first communicated to the authorities in Dublin his correspondence with Mrs. Minnie Walsh and the receipt of the anonymous letters with reference to the supposed outrage?

In June last.

How could he communicate to the authorities in Dublin in June the correspondence and letters which were not received until the month of August.

They were earlier. The letters were in June.

Is it not a fact that none of these five letters written to men in Galway were written in June—that they were not written earlier than August?

I was not referring to the anonymous letters. These letters were first brought to the attention of the Executive by the hon. Member for East Galway. What I was referring to was the letters between Lord Ashtown, Mr. Trench, and Mrs. Walsh.

May I ask on what date he told about the transaction about the five letters?

I cannot give you that.

But the matter is important.

What I have to say is that they kept in touch with the authorities from day to day, informing them as it went on.

Are we to understand then that from June last the authorities in Dublin were aware that Lord Ashtown had Mrs. Walsh in his employment seeking for information as to outrage?

I do not think Lord Ashtown could be said to have her in his employment until he gave her £5.

Is it not a fact that the anonymous letter, extracts from which Mr. Trench gave to the Inspector-General of Constabulary in Dublin, was the letter handed in to his office by Percy Walsh, the boy?

I understand the anonymous letters were those which the hon. Member for East Galway gave to the authorities.

Is it not a fact that the boy, Percy Walsh, who was acquitted at the trial, handed in to Trench's office an anonymous letter and that it was extracts from that letter that Trench gave to the Inspector-General of Constabulary in Dublin, and that put them in motion, and that that was not done until late in August or in the early part of September?

I think the hon. Member should give notice of these details. The Attorney - General cannot be expected to carry them all in his recollection.

As it is desirable that this should be cleared up, I wish to ask what it is the right hon. Gentleman means by a direct charge; he said that Lord Ashtown made no direct charge against her; may I ask did he at any time make any charge against her?

What I meant to say was that Lord Ashtown—[NATIONALIST cries of "Answer the Question "]—what I meant to say was that Lord Ashtown merely furnished information as to the facts, stating the letters received and what they were doing in these matters. They left it to us to say whether we would take proceedings or not, and I decided upon my own authority that proceedings should be taken.

Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the first part of my Question, namely, whether Lord Ashtown or his agent, Mr. Trench, has made any charge against Mrs. Minnie Walsh either of obtaining money under false pretences or of carrying on a criminal correspondence until after the Monday when the Member for the division set the Crown in motion.

I think I have already answered that Question. [NATIONALIST cries of "No."] Lord Ashtown merely stated the facts—it was I who formulated the charge.

When?

When the prosecution commenced in the police court.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to a claim made by, and fees paid to, the Local Government Board amounting to £40 2s. for auditing the accounts of the county Donegal committees of agriculture and technical instruction, which fees should be included in the £100 paid annually by the county council to the Local Government Board for auditing the county accounts; and whether, seeing that these fees were illegally charged, he will take steps to have them refunded.

The accounts of the committees affected by the judicial decision in the Cork case will for the present be audited by the Local Government Board without audit fee, pending further consideration of the position. A legal question, however, arises as to whether such committees are entitled to recover from the Board the fees paid for past audits. It is open to the Donegal Committee to take steps to obtain a judicial decision on this point. The Local Government Board have no power, without an order of the Court, to refund the fees in question.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the traffic in firearms has increased considerably in numerous districts in Ireland since the repeal, in 1906, of the Peace Preservation Act, 1881; that firearms have since been openly on sale throughout Ireland; and that, from the last published Report of the Board of Inland Revenue, it appears that, while the number of 10s. gun-licences issued in Ireland in 1902–1903, 1903–1904, 1904–1905, and 1905–1906 was 18,237, 18,047, 18,484, and 18,877, respectively, the number issued in 1906–1907 was only 19,159, notwithstanding the removal of the restrictions imposed on the possession of arms by the repealed Act of 1881; and, seeing that it is now open to any person to keep a gun within the curtilage of his house and farm without being obliged to take out a 10s. licence, will he say upon whom rests the duty of enforcing the provisions of the Gun Licence Act of 1870, in the event of such person being found carrying a gun outside the curtilage of his house and farm; whether there are any duties imposed on the police in the enforcement of the Act; whether any representations have been made to him that firearms are at present freely obtainable and carried; and whether he will consider the question of introducing legislation having for its object the reenactment of the restrictions and safeguards imposed by the Act of 1881.

There has doubtless been some increase in the traffic in firearms in Ireland, but the police authorities inform me that the increase appears to be not more than would ordinarily follow the removal of a restriction as to carrying arms. Firearms have always been openly on sale in Ireland. The only limitation heretofore was in respect of the persons who might possess them. The figures as to gun licences are correctly quoted from the Report of the Board of Inland Revenue. The duty of enforcing the Gun Licence Act of 1870 rests on the officers of Inland Revenue, but the police co-operate with them under the authority of Section 9 of that Act. Firearms are now freely obtainable in Ireland as elsewhere. That, indeed, is the necessary result of not renewing the Act of 1881. I have already informed the hon. Member that it is not intended to re-enact that Act.

Is it not a fact that the number of shooting outrages has increased very largely since we refused to renew this Act?

The number of shooting outrages has increased during the last month or so, but the figures are not larger than they have been at previous times in Irish history, and it would not be safe to connect the two facts.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether it is the intention of the Government to introduce a Bill extending to Ireland the provisions of The Pistols Act, 1903; and, if so, can he state when the measure will be introduced.

The Government are considering the advisability of introducing a Bill on this subject, but I am not at present in a position to make any definite statement.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland whether he is aware that the tenants of the Pollock estate have refused to pay rent until the estate is handed over to the Estates Commissioners; and whether those officials will be instructed to decline any properties for sale which are offered to them under illegal pressure of this kind.

The Estates Commissioners have been informed that in December last the tenants on the Pollock Estate refused to pay their rents until the Commissioners should buy the estate. The Commissioners had commenced informal negotiations for the purchase of the estate so far back as June, 1905, and a formal application was made by the owner to the Commissioners to purchase the estate in August, 1906. The question of price has been the subject of protracted negotiations with the owner, but the Commissioners hope that an agreement will shortly be arrived at. These facts show that the negotiations for sale had been entered upon long before the refusal to pay rent.

was understood to ask if the Estates Commissioners should not refuse to enter into negotiations for the sale of the estates, the tenants of which have applied illegal pressure by refusing to pay rents.

I understand that in this case there was no such illegal pressure before the negotiations which have been pending for years.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the prosecution and conviction at sessions recently held at Athenry, of a steward of Mr. Shaw Taylor's, named James Lindsay, for stealing bacon from the shop of Mr. Campbell; whether he is aware that Lindsay produced in court a character from Lord Ashtown, in which he stated that Lindsay was sober and honest; and whether this man is provided with police protection.

The fact is as stated in the first part of the Question. Lindsay produced in court a letter from his former employer, Lord Ashtown, testifying that Lindsay was, whilst in his employment, honest and sober. Lindsay has been receiving police protection for the past year, during which he has been employed as a caretaker by Mr. Shaw Taylor.

Did Lord Ashtown say that this man was sober and honest?

He was asked for the man's character, and said that in his opinion he was sober and honest.

I beg to ask the Chief Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland whether his attention has been called to the recent prosecution and conviction, at Athenry petty sessions, of a gamekeeper of Lord Ashtown's for having in his possession a loaded revolver while drunk upon the public street; whether the country has to bear the expense of providing this man with police protection; and what action, if any, the Government intend to take in this case.

Patrick McDermott, who is a gamekeeper in Lord Ashtown's employment, was recently fined for drunkenness while in possession of a loaded revolver. McDermott receives police protection, but it is provided by the established force and does not involve a charge on the county funds. The man has been punished for his offence, and no further action is called for.

Will he be allowed to carry a revolver in the future? Does he require that as he is under police protection?

Is this the man whose name was mentioned in the case of Lord Ashtown v. Minnie Walsh?

I cannot say.

Well, he is.

I beg to ask Mr. Attorney-General for Ireland whether he can say if it is intended to continue the practice of furnishing guards of honour to the Judges of Assize in Ireland; from what source is the expense thereof defrayed; and, in view of the fact that the Lord Chief Justice frequently walked from his temporary residence to the Cork court house during the last winter assizes, unescorted and unattended, and many of the learned Judges dislike this quasi-military parade in connection with the discharge of civil functions, the Irish Government will consider the advisability of modifying or abolishing it.

By long established usage military or police guards of honour and escorts are furnished to the going Judges of Assize in Ireland. When the guard is a military one the expense, if any, is defrayed from Army Votes, but the amount must be immaterial seeing that the practice of supplying such guards is confined to garrison towns. When the guard is supplied by the police the cost falls on the Vote for the Royal Irish Constabulary. There is no official information showing that the Lord Chief Justice dispensed with an escort at the last winter assizes at Cork. It is not intended to discontinue the practice in question.

Will the right hon. Gentleman accept it from me that at the last assizes I frequently saw learned Judges walking about unescorted and unattended?

Certainly.

said he made no apology for asking leave to introduce a Bill to amend the Statutes in reference to the Irish Peerage, because everything in relation to the Irish Peerage had been rendered interesting by recent events. He would say in reference to the Bill that he would not have introduced it, and certainly not in that way, if he had not the support of Members of his own Party and of Members representing every section of Liberal opinion in the House; and for fear the Bill should be considered revolutionary in any way, he would state to the House that it was the exact Bill that was introduced and carried in all its stages in the House of Lords thirty-two years ago. It was carried by the Ministry of that day and brought down to this House under the care of Lord Ashbourne, then Mr. Edward Gibson, but somehow or other it was lost. It was a Bill in one clause and was simply this: to repeal the various statutes by which, and under statutory powers, Irish peerages were created. It had nothing to do with prerogative, because Irish peerages were not now created under the old power of prerogative, but under statute, with very fixed limitations. Perhaps he might be allowed to explain that. It had been frequently said that at the time of the Scottish Union the prerogative for creating Scottish peers was abolished, and that at the time of the Irish Union the prerogative for creating Irish peers was not abolished but was limited. That was not true. There was no prerogative abolished at the time of the Scottish Union. Scotland was a separate kingdom until the year 1707, and her king had the right of creating peerages, and when that kingdom was fused in England the Scottish peers became by statute peers of Great Britain. In the Scottish Union Bill, which he had carefully read, there was not one single word about any abolition of the prerogative, nor was there in the Irish Act of Union, which was exactly on the lines of the Scottish Union until this point, that a provision was made that when three Irish peerages extant at the time of the Union became extinct one Irish peerage might be created, until the Irish peerage was reduced to the number of 100. By Irish peerages, he did not mean peers of Great Britain with Irish titles and peerages, but peers of Ireland, who had no hereditary seats in the House of Lords. When the number of Irish peerages was reduced to 100 the words of the statute were imperative that the number of peers should be filled up and kept on at that number. Sir John Coleridge gave that opinion in the House of Lords, and if he was right, to show the absurdity of the thing, eight Irish peerages should be filled up at this moment. He would only use the literal words that could be quoted out of the mouth of an Irish peer in reference to this position. In the Irish Parliament at the time of the Union, when this provision for having what they called a degraded Irish peerage was proposed by the Government, it was fiercely opposed. He had in his hands a copy of a private letter written by Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant of the Union, to the Duke of Portland, who was the medium of communication between the Irish Government and this country. In 1800, when the Union was well advanced, he said in that letter that—

"So violent a spirit had arisen amongst the Irish lords and amongst those who were the best friends of the Government, against the reservation of the power of creating Irish peers after the Union, that it was the general opinion of His Majesty's principal servants there that the clause could not be carried. The language amongst peers was that they could not abandon the interests of their posterity, that the persons who were thereafter to be created peers of Ireland would be men of weight and consequence in England, who would always succeed to the vacancies in the representative peerage, and that the families of the ancient peers would be reduced to a state of contempt and insignificance."

They were for once good prophets, but when they made that prophecy they thought that an English gentleman without any peerage at all would be given an Irish peerage, that in due course of time, through some influence or other, he would be made an Irish representative peer, and they thought it was very horrible and degrading; but they never contemplated that an English gentleman would become an Irish peer thirty years after the last Irish peer was created, and that he should ask that the Irish peers should elect him as a representative peer. They never considered that, although they were prescient enough. In 1874, on account of a Motion instituted in the House of Lords to prevent the creation of fresh Irish peers, a special Committee of the House of Lords was created under the Chairmanship of Lord Rosebery, and that Committee reported unanimously that the Irish peerage was an anomaly, and that any fresh creation of an Irish peerage was not right or necessary and was a highly unconstitutional act. After that the Bill of which he had made a copy passed the House of Lords unanimously, and what he asked leave to do was to produce now what passed the House of Lords thirty years ago and prevent for ever after such an anomaly as they had witnessed recently in the Irish peerage election. He asked leave to introduce the Bill.

The Resolution which stands on the Paper will seem at first sight to be sufficiently long and comprehensive, but there is one small point which could not be expressed in any such Resolution, and which it is necessary for me to deal with. In order to bring myself within the express terms of Standing Order 66, I take this opportunity of saying that the Motion required for the charge which would be imposed by a clause dealing with salaries in the Small Landholders Bill is made with the requisite recommendation of the Crown. Having acquitted myself on that necessary point, I now proceed to move this Resolution. This Motion for allocation of time differs from any that I have found it my duty to propose to the House during the last two sessions, and, as far as I am aware, from any proposed by those preceding me on this Bench. The Motion proposes a more summary method than we have been accustomed to. It is undoubtedly a novelty, and it is therefore necessary that I should justify what is an unusual proceeding. That justification I find amply provided in the circumstances of the case. I am glad to say that I think I can make good the justification and explain the circumstances without any reference to the controversial merits of either of these two Bills and without any reproach addressed to either of the Houses with respect to their dealings with this matter. What ever we may feel on this matter, it is not necessary for my purpose to say a word on any such subject. What are the plain facts of the case? I take first the Small Landholders Bill. When this House was invited to consider that measure last session, it was already practically familiar with its general scope and with its provisions. It was no new measure. It had been brought in in the previous year—in July, 1906—and it had been before the country during the autumn and winter of that year. Very little notice, I daresay, was taken of it in England and Ireland, but in Scotland it was hotly canvassed, closely examined, and received, as we believe, a predominant amount of favour among those who were interested in the matter. Last session ample opportunities were given for the further consideration of this Bill. Let me remind the House of the facts. The greater part of a day was given to the First Reading. Two days were given to the Second Reading. It was sent to the Standing Committee at the end of April, and after twenty-two sittings, lasting until the end of July three days were given to the Report stage, and a Friday to the Third Reading. Therefore, when in August, 1907, the House of Commons expressed its final judgment on this Bill, it was a mature, well-informed, and definite judgment that we pronounced. Now is there any reason to suppose that since that time there has been a wavering of opinion with regard to this Bill among the mass of the people of Scotland? And, after all, it is the mass of the people of Scotland who are mostly interested in this Bill. There is no reason whatever to believe that there has been the slightest alteration except in the direction of intensification of the feeling in favour of the Bill. On the contrary, everything tends to show that the object and the provisions of the Bill are more and more heartily approved and more and more eagerly desired. Let me, in passing, mention another fact that deserves notice. Hon Members will remember that when this question of small holdings came before us last session there was expressed, as regards both England and Scotland, an extraordinary willingness on the part of the landowners to concede land for small holdings. But great doubt was expressed as to whether there was any corresponding desire on the part of those concerned to obtain small holdings. The House will remember all the questions that were asked about certain returns which were held to show that the agricultural districts were wholly apathetic. Since last summer the Small Holdings Bill for England has become law, and its reception, and the action taken on it, has placed beyond doubt the reality and strength of the demand for small holdings, a demand which, as any one who knows anything of the two countries is aware is even more vivid and urgent in Scotland than in England. So much for the Small Holdings Bill. I have traced its career to the time when it was carried along the passage to the other House. I turn now to the Land Values Bill, containing the much-combated principle of the separate valuation of land. Was this a rashly precipitated measure, an unheard-of revolutionary proposal which required an extraordinary amount of time for its consideration? Why, during the period of office of the late Government, at a time when the Conservative majority was almost supreme within these walls. Bills embodying that principle were on four separate occasions submitted to the House, and on two occasions received the approval of the House of Commons We claim, therefore, that both these measures were well understood in this House and out of it, and we further claim that they answer a real and urgent need, and that the House of Commons has pronounced a settled opinion upon them. These Bills, however, failed to pass into law. How was that? They were sent up in the expiring days of August—perhaps I should more correctly say in the days of expiring August. The larger measure was subjected to some criticism, and then the debate on the Second Reading was adjourned sine die, and the intention openly expressed by its opponents was that the Bill should be entirely remodelled, and that provisions of another kind altogether should take the place of those which we put forward. It became obvious that in the last days of August so large an operation could not be carried out and discussed in both Houses during what remained of the session. It was the more hopeless because the views indicated by the opponents of the measure in the other place involved a strong prejudice—I will say no more—against the cardinal principles of the Bill, one of which is the establishment of a Court for the fixing of rent, and the other the granting of a fixed tenure of occupation, and they being the matter of dispute it became, I will not say impossible, but obviously extremely difficult, to arrive at a reconciliation of the views entertained by the advocates and the opponents of the Bill. Therefore this Bill came naturally to an end. The Land Values Bill, on the other hand, was denied a Second Reading. Much exception was taken to its principle, but the main reason alleged by the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords for rejecting the Bill was lack of time. Lord Lansdowne on 26th August said—

"I say of this present Bill in particular "—

something had been said about the practice always complained of, and legitimately complained of, by the House of Lords that Bills were sent up too late for their proper and full consideration—

"that I do not believe you could find any Bill of this great importance having been presented to this House within twenty-four hours of the prorogation."

And again, at the end of his speech he used these words—

"Therefore, my Lords, if we refuse to read this Bill a second time this evening, I trust it will be understood that we are in reality only doing that which the First Lord of the Admiralty has suggested that we should do, deferring the further consideration of this Bill and its consequences until a more opportune moment."

His reference to the First Lord of the Admiralty pointed to some things that had been said in the course of the debate on the policy of a possible Parliamentary procedure of carrying over a Bill which had been advanced considerably in its stages, or which, at all events, had passed through one House, and resuming consideration of it in another session. It is to gratify this view of Lord Lansdowne, which I admit is a reasonable one, that we reintroduce both of these Bills in the earliest days of this session. I wish to point out that, in carrying out the course now proposed, we are fulfilling the undertaking which I made in this place towards the end of last session, when I announced that the Small Holders Bill would not be further proceeded with. I said then—

"We abandon the further progress of this Bill with the greatest regret, but the provisions of the Bill which are thus objected to will be reintroduced at an early date, and will be pressed through this House in as speedy a manner as possible, and then we shall invite the other House either honestly to reject those provisions or to pass the Bill with reasonable Amendments consistent with its main purpose and principles."

But I must refer to something else that happened last session. A resolution was adopted, on my motion, by the House of Commons affirming the principle that the power of the other House to alter or reject Bills passed by this House should be so restricted by law as to secure that within the limits of a single Parliament the final decision of the Commons should prevail. I then explained in rough outline the scheme by which we proposed to accomplish this object. Is what I am now doing inconsistent with that scheme? It differs from it in some particulars, naturally. There has been no law passed, but is it in flagrant inconsistence with what we indicated as that which we deemed to be the desirable procedure in the future? Not at all. The procedure we recommend the House to adopt is in strict accordance with the spirit and intention of that resolution, and with the general scheme which I indicated to the House, whereby effect was to be given to the Resolution. Let me recall the features of that scheme, which are apposite to what we are doing to-day. I said—

"The Bill, either the same Bill, with or without modifications, or a similar Bill with the same object "—

these are the same Bills—

"might be reintroduced after a substantial interval, and by a substantial interval I have in my mind a minimum of, perhaps, six months."

I do not know whether the six months are quite expired, but I think it will be considered that it is a very convenient period of the session at which we take this action. We are to do this unless in case of great urgency. I said—

"This Bill would be passed through its various stages, in the House of Commons under limitations of time, limitations of time adapted to the requirements of the case, discussion being restricted as far as possible to the new matter, if, any, introduced. The Bill would then be sent up again so that the other House would have ample opportunity to consider it."

We are, therefore, carrying out to-day an announced and considered policy, and no one can complain that any surprise has been sprung upon them. Our recommendations constitute an innovation. I have already said they do. This is the first time, I believe, in the history of this House that Bills have been a second time sent up to the House of Lords within the compass of a single Parliament. But so was the Resolution passed by this House last year an innovation, and, as I have said, both Houses have had full warning as to the course that would be adopted. The Amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks seems to imply that there would have been no occasion for this Resolution had the necessary machinery for regulating the allocation of time been set up. I am in favour of a much more regular proceeding than the ordinary motion which we know as the guillotine motion. So, I believe, is everybody, but I confess that I must have been carried away by a little of the sanguine spirit of youth, for I think that the difficulties in the way of forming a committee of business seem to grow upon one the nearer one comes to it. Therefore, the Government are most anxious to find some solution, and, as a matter of fact, are earnestly engaged in considering the matter. But, be the virtues of such an arrangement what they may, I cannot believe that they would have availed for this particular instance, because this transaction is one, first of all, requiring to be immediately dealt with, and is also one that must be justified by considerations which have never before been submitted to the House, and which, I believe, the House would not be disposed to relegate to any Committee whatever. I think that is a weak argument to use, weak ground to take, against this Resolution, but, weak as it is, it is very much firmer than another argument which might have been used if it had been proposed, in opposing this Resolution, to found a claim for the House of Lords to be able, when it chooses, to put this House to all the trouble and annoyance and sacrifice of useless, dilatory, and superfluous debate on a matter so recently decided. These Bills are to go up to the House of Lords for reconsideration. Why should we waste the time of this House threshing a fresh matter which has been so recently considered by the House? I hold that by this Resolution we are maintaining the dignity and we are saving the time of this House. Under this scheme an opportunity is allowed for moving an Amendment, and an invitation is addressed to the House to reaffirm the opinion it has so unequivocally recorded once at a recent date. This seems to me to be all that is required to meet the circumstances of the case, and I confidently submit the Resolution to the House. Motion made, and Question proposed, "That in the case of the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill and the Land Values (Scotland) Bill, the Committee on the Financial Resolution (if any) relating to the Bill shall be deemed to have been set up as required by the Standing Orders of the House, and the Second Reading, Committee Stage, and Report Stage of the Bill (including the Financial Resolution (if any) relating thereto) and the Third Reading of the Bill shall be proceeded with in the following manner: (a) The Committee Stage of the Financial Resolution (if any) relating to the Bill, and the Second Reading of the Bill, shall be proceeded with and brought to a conclusion on the first allotted day; and the Bill shall when it has been read a second time, stand committed to a Committee of the Whole House without Question put; (b) the Report Stage of the Financial Resolution (if any) and the Committee Stage of the Bill, and, if the Bill is not amended in Committee, the Report of the Bill to the House, and the Third Reading of the Bill, shall be proceeded with and brought to a conclusion on the second allotted day, and on the conclusion of the consideration of the Bill in Committee the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without Question put; (c) if the Bill is amended in Committee, the Report Stage and the Third Reading of the Bill shall be proceeded with and brought to a conclusion on a third allotted day. After this Order comes into operation, any day (other than Friday) shall be considered an allotted day for the purposes of this Order on which the Bill is put down as the first Order of the day, or on which any stage of the Financial Resolution (if any) relating thereto is put down as first order of the day followed by the Bill. On any allotted day on which proceedings on any business allotted to that day are to be brought to a conclusion, the Speaker or Chairman shall at 10.30 p.m. if the day is one on which Government business has precedence after 8.15 p.m., and at 7.45 p.m. if the day is one on which Government business has not precedence after 8.15 p.m. (if those proceedings have not already been brought to a conclusion) put forthwith the Question on any Amendment or Motion already proposed from the Chair, and shall next proceed successively to put forthwith the Question on any Amendments moved by the Government of which notice has been given, but no other Amendments, and on any question necessary to dispose of the business to be concluded, and in the case of Government Amendments or of Government new clauses or schedules he shall put only the Question that the Amendment be made or that the clause or schedule be added to the Bill, as the case may be, and on the Committee Stage of the Bill the Chairman, in the case of a series of clauses to which no notice of amendment has been given by the Government, shall put the Question that those clauses stand part of the Bill without putting the Question separately as respects each clause. Proceedings to which this order relates shall not on any day, on which any proceedings or business are to be brought to a conclusion under this order, be interrupted under the provisions of any Standing Order relating to the Sittings of the House. In the case of an allotted day being a day on which Government business has not precedence after 8.15 p.m., the time at which the proceedings or business to be brought to a conclusion are so brought to a conclusion shall, if that time is later than a quarter past eight, be substituted, for the purposes of Standing Orders relating to the precedence of business at different sittings and to the time for taking Private Business, for 8.15 p.m. On an allotted day no dilatory Motion on the Bill, nor Motion to re-commit the Bill, nor Motion for adjournment under Standing Order 10, nor Motion to postpone a clause, shall be received unless moved by a Minister of the Crown, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith without any debate. Nothing in this order shall—(a) prevent any business which under this order is to be concluded on an allotted day being proceeded with on any other day, or necessitate a day being allotted to any such business if the business to be concluded has been otherwise disposed of; or (b) prevent any other business being proceeded with on an allotted day in accordance with the Standing Orders of the House after the business to be concluded on the allotted day has been disposed of (King's Recommendation of the payment of any Salaries, Compensation, and other Expenses that may be incurred in pursuance of any Act of the present session to encourage the formation of Small Agricultural Holdings in Scotland, and of the payment of an Annual Grant for the purposes of such Act, signified)."—(Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.)

There was one part of the speech of the Tight hon. Gentleman in explaining his Motion in which, I think, he really tried to convince us on a matter which I, at all events, require no persuasion. I do not regard this Motion with any feeling of surprise; I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman that he has indicated before that he proposed to proceed by some such Motion as this; and I fully anticipated not the extreme length of the Resolution which you, Sir, have just laboured through from the chair, but that some Resolution of the kind would be proposed by the right hon. Gentleman early in the session. That caused no surprise. One part of his speech, I think, did cause surprise, and it was that in which he explained to the House that he thought the House of Lords was perfectly justified, considering the time at which an important measure was sent up, in declining to proceed with it in the course of last session. I am glad to hear that admission from the right hon. Gentleman, but I find it very hard to reconcile with the innumerable speeches made by himself and by his friends in the course of the autumn and winter campaign. I remember making a rough calculation that some Member of that distinguished Bench had spoken, on an average, every three days during the autumn campaign in Scotland upon the subject of these two Bills. Every speaker dwelt rather on the demerits of the House of Lords than on the merits of the Bill-; and every speaker, so far as I remember, put in the very forefront of his indictment against the House of Lords the fact that they had rejected these Bills. It is gratifying to learn after all this enormous expenditure—I had almost said waste—of eloquence and argument, that the Prime Minister himself comes down and tells us to-day that, taking all the circumstances of the last session into account, he cannot deny that the Lords were thoroughly justified in declining to discuss these very important questions towards the latter end of August. We do not always agree on the subject of the House of Lords, but I imagine that on this particular occasion, and in this particular controversy, the Prime Minister and myself are entirely at one. The right hon. Gentleman has not anticipated in his speech the sort of objection which I feel disposed to take, as far as I am concerned, to the Resolution he has brought before us. There are two aspects of that Resolution—one strictly concerned with procedure, the other pointing to those larger issues of policy to which the right hon. Gentleman referred in the closing portion of his speech. I may, perhaps, say a word before I sit down upon this latter aspect, but I may be permitted to begin with that which, I think, is the more important point, at all events, the more strictly relevant point, in this discussion. He tells us that he has initiated to-day for the first time a new experiment in our sessional orders. I think that is quite true, but, frankly, and for my own part, I think some Of his other experiments have been greater violations of Parliamentary tradition and practice than the one he asks us to debate tonight. At all events, this I think clear, that the House of Lords has no ground to complain of the step which the right hon. Gentleman wishes us to take on the present occasion. The House of Lords has on various occasions during the last half century urged this House to adopt some method of what is called "carrying over," by which a Bill which is not adequately discussed in the course of one session may be resumed in the course of the next, and time may thus be given to both Houses of Parliament adequate to the various clauses. That has been the request of the House of Lords formally made to this House, sometimes in one shape and sometimes in another by very strong and important Committees of that House, but, so far, never adopted by this House. And so far as the House of Lords is concerned, I think that the precedent which the right hon. Gentleman has set to-day is a good one, because the House of Lords clearly will always be justified, when they have not time at the end of the session, in saying: "This is not a Bill which we have time to discuss adequately during the few days left to us. If the House of Commons can show that there are no inconveniences inflicted upon them by the rejection of the Bill, they can get through all its stages at the cost of a few hours debate at the beginning of the next session, and thus give us time really to debate in detail the very important measure which they have sent up to us." So far the right hon. Gentleman is carrying out the request of the House of Lords which his predecessors have always refused to carry out. And therefore quite frankly, and as far as the relations between the two Houses are concerned, I think the right hon. Gentleman has made a new departure which must in the future give the House of Lords an opportunity of dealing in detail with the measures sent to it by this House which it has never sufficiently enjoyed in the past. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right in saying that not under one Government alone, but under more than one Government, Bills have, owing to the exigencies of debate in this House, been sent up to the House of Lords too late. Everybody admits it. It happened in the time of the late Government; it has happened still more in the time of the present Government. The successive Governments are not really responsible for that. It is the procedure of this House which makes it impossible very often to finish a great Bill before the second week in August—before a period when it really is unreasonable to ask either House of Legislature, dealing with great complicated and controversial details, to deal with any measure sent to them. Therefore, I am glad from the point of view of the House of Lords, at all events, and the discussion of our measures by the House of Lords, that the right hon. Gentleman has devised a plan which is applicable, of course, to other Bills as well as to this one, by which, without any undue labours being thrown upon this House, the other House may be able to deal at length and adequately with any proposals sent up to it. Well, my objection, therefore, from the point of view of procedure has nothing whatever to do with the relation between the two Houses. It has simply to do with the procedure of this House. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman has fresh in his mind the Reports of the various Committees which sat upon this and on cognate subjects during the last fifty years. I was myself a member of a Committee which sat in 1890 upon this very question of carrying over, which this is in effect, and I was myself the draftsman of the report which that Committee finally adopted. But the object that the majority of that Committee had in view was that Bills brought into this House should be thoroughly discussed in this House, even at the cost of extending the discussions on them into a second session. I am not pressing on the Government that they should accept the Report of that Committee as it stands. Many things have happened in regard to the procedure of this House since the year 1890; but still the broad problem which that Committee attempted to deal with remains unsolved, and we have not found a method by which Bills can be adequately discussed in this House before they are sent up to the other House. Now what was the objection taken by an important minority to the plan that we proposed? We proposed that Bills should be carried over. "No," said the minority, led by Mr. Gladstone, supported by Sir William Harcourt, and containing a large number of men of light and leading at that time constituting the Opposition; "No," they said, "it will be a great disadvantage to carry over from one session to another," and the first reason they gave against that proceeding was that no Government ever brought in Bills a second time without having, through discussion in this House and the country, seen reason to modify and improve proposals that they made on the first occasion. So that here you have two alternative plans discussed by the last Committee which sat on this question. There was the plan which we favoured on this side, which undoubtedly gave full opportunity to this House to discuss all the proposals brought before it. You had the objection raised by Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt that, whatever merits there might be in that scheme, it had the enormous demerit that the Government bringing in the Bill would not have that opportunity of revising it, recasting it, and remodelling it which the necessity of bringing in a new Bill would throw upon them. Well, I think there was force in that argument, as there certainly was force in the argument used on the other side. What is the argument of the right hon. Gentleman? He has set himself to work, and he has found a plan which combines the disadvantages of both schemes and the advantages of neither. He has devised a plan by which the House is never allowed fully to discuss a Bill, and a plan which prevents the Government from remodelling a Bill when they bring it in a second time—a plan equally repugnant to the argument used by the majority and the minority of the Committee of 1890. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks I am painting in too dark colours the plan he has adopted let me just ask the House to recall how much discussion there was upon the Small Holdings Bill last session. The right hon. Gentleman has given a list of the days spent either in the House or Grand Committee, and says that a great deal of time was spent either in the House or in the Grand Committee. I never will admit that this procedure in Grand Committee is the equivalent, though it may, under appropriate circumstances, be a substitute, for debate in the whole House. They are not the same thing, and nothing will make them so. I do not quarrel with the principle contained in the hint thrown out by the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he said he favoured a plan by which the uncontroversial parts of a Bill might be sent to a Grand Committee; but that was not the plan adopted by the Government last session with reference to the Small Holdings Bill. That Bill, be it a good or a bad Bill, at all events deals in a very drastic manner with the whole system of landed property in Scotland, whether the property of the owners or of the cultivators of the soil. It attacks or modifies profoundly the whole system under which landed property in Scotland is now held whether by owners or occupiers; its importance is prodigious, its controversial character has never been denied. That Bill never was discussed for a day in Committee of the Whole House, and it is perfectly absurd to say that opportunity for discussion was given to so many men so well qualified to speak upon it. I turn from that fundamental and initial objection to the whole procedure on the Bill. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that discussion upstairs is equivalent to discussion in the whole House, and that we may take the Grand Committee as a true microcosm of the House of Commons how much of the Bill was discussed? I have here a copy of the Bill, with all the clauses marked which were passed without discussion under the closure moved by the Minister in charge. I do not argue whether or not the closure was justified; but what I do argue and what is undeniable is that, as the result of the closure, the great principles in this Bill were not discussed, even in the imperfect manner in which a Grand Committee admits of discussion. The right hon. Gentleman told us just now that one of the cardinal principles of the Bill was the erection of a tribunal for fixing rent. That tribunal was not discussed, except in so far as salaries were concerned. It was not discussed in Grand Committee at all—the cardinal principles of the Bill was never discussed, unless you call it the cardinal principle that somebody's salary should be raised from £1,000 to £1,200 a year. Next to the constitution of the tribunal I should have thought that the method of dealing with the existing owner and occupier of land in Scotland, and of constituting new holdings would have been, at all events, a subject which the Grand Committee might have had an opportunity of discussing. They did not have that opportunity, and surely it is ludicrous for the right hon. Gentleman to come down and tell us that, as this Bill has been thoroughly discussed in the course of last session, we should be wasting our time if we were to devote any more of our valuable leisure to debating it, and that all we can do is to send it up at once by this novel and summary process to the other House. With regard to the other Bill which is unequally yoked with the Small Holdings Bill in this Resolution, that was not closured in Grand Committee. So far as Grand Committee was concerned, I daresay the discussion was adequate. Not having been a member of the Committee, I am not qualified to speak; but I well remember that when it came down to this House and we got the opportunity, for the first time, of dealing with the details of the measure, we were kept up till four in the morning by the two learned Gentlemen in charge of the Bill, and had to discuss it in circumstances in which, as everybody knows, rational discussion is almost an impossibility. Now what does the right hon. Gentleman say in answer to that? He says the House was well acquainted with the Bills, for one was brought in July, 1906, and as for the other, two Bills something like it, have been discussed on some private Member's Friday, in the course of the preceding Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman is laughing at us. That is the kind of argument which may impose on persons outside the House who know nothing of its procedure; but to say it without a smile on his countenance to Gentlemen well acquainted with the proceedings of the House was really to ask them to accept courteously a travesty of Parliamentary argument, which is, I think, hardly worthy of the right hon. Gentleman. He knows as well as anybody else that when a great and far-reaching measure, dealing in a revolutionary spirit with long-established principles, is brought into this House, it is never taken seriously by the House until it is taken in charge by the Government of the day, and not even then until the Government of the day gives adequate time for discussion. That time never has been given by the Government of the day. The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that these private Members' discussions on Friday never have been, and never are, seriously taken [MINISTERIAL cries of "Oh"] as more than a general expression of opinion that something in the direction of the Bill ought to be considered by those responsible for guiding legislation. The Government will not have carrying over which would give us an opportunity for full discussion, and they have not yet produced any alternative plan by which full discussion can be obtained. They always tell us that they are anxiously looking out for a plan. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the closer he approached the problem, the more difficult it appeared to be—as he neared the fence, the more difficult it appeared to be to get over it. What has he done? He has adopted a plan which has the evils of every other plan, which does not ensure full debate, and does not give Ministers an opportunity of revising their Bills. Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt said, with reference to our proposals for carrying over—

"The great advantage would be lost, as pointed out by the Committee of 1851, of altering in a new session the freedom and scope of a measure. There are few Bills of the first importance which, after full discussion and with a more complete knowledge of the sentiment of the House and the country, could not with advantage be recast."

Well, that is the view of such experienced legislators as Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt. They have been followed by successors more successful in the drafting of Bills, happier in their power of grasping public opinion; more careful in their method of drafting—gentlemen whose powers of prevision are such that they can forecast all objections, although they may have taken care that those objections should never be reached in this House, and who, no doubt, if an opportunity had by accident been given to us for urging objections, would have found an answer so adequate, so complete, that they would be absolutely justified in bringing in a Bill a second time in its old form, with not even a comma altered. Happy is the right hon. Gentleman in having colleagues whose legislative capacity so far transcends anything that Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt found possible. It is somewhat astonishing, however, that these two Bills, with their innate perfection, so absolutely free from any taint of original sin, are the two Bills on which more especially the Government themselves happen to be divided, and have publicly expressed their opinion. We know perfectly well, as far as the Valuation Bill is concerned, that the policy which the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer look forward to founding on that Bill is fundamentally and totally different from the policy of the Solicitor-General for Scotland. We know so far as the Small Holdings Bill for Scotland is concerned that one of the colleagues of the right hon. Gentleman has expressed his regret that the cardinal principles of this Bill have been adopted; he would have liked to see quite a different set of cardinal principles adopted, viz., those which are embodied in the English Bill, on the success of which the right hon. Gentleman is already congratulating himself. With every respect to the capacity of the Scottish officers, when I find them claiming infallibility and waving that infallible flag in the face of their own colleagues, I think the right hon. Gentleman would have been not ill-advised if he had carried out Mr. Gladstone's suggestion, and taken advantage of such criticism—small enough—as was permitted in this House and as was given under freer circumstances in the country. It is upon these considerations that I base chiefly my objection to this proposal. If we had been allowed fully to discuss the measure last session, if we had sent it up too late to the House of Lords for them to discuss it, and if the House of Lords had objected on that ground, I should have thought the method proposed for carrying over the Bill had something to be said for it; but when we are asked to pass in this manner a Bill of which the main provisions never were discussed in this House or in the Grand Committee, I can only say that the novelty of the procedure with regard to a Bill which comes to us in a new session, under these auspices and with these antecedents, is only of a piece with all the other ingenious methods by which the right hon. Gentleman has been dealing with the ancient liberties of this House, which he admits to be regrettable and even deplorable. He desires to find a remedy, and frankly tells us that he has no remedy in view, and such visions of a remedy as he entertained last session seem to be vanishing in the dim and hazy distance. That is my main objection to this Resolution as a matter of procedure. The right hon. Gentleman referred at the end of his speech to another and a larger question. He has told us that this is part of his plan for dealing with the House of Lords, and a kind of instalment of that method by which he desires to reduce to impotence the other branch of the Legislature. We all know perfectly well that this is part of the plan of filling up the cup. It was announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and others that they were going to pursue this course, and they have never denied pursuing this course, in order to get a case against the House of Lords. I have only two observations to make on that. One is that the occupiers and owners of land in Scotland and the ratepayers of Scotland ought not to be made pawns in this game which the right hon. Gentleman proposes to play against the House of Lords. I think when you are dealing with interests as great as those affected by these measures you ought to try to bring in measures which are intended to pass, and not measures which are obviously intended not to pass. It is perfectly clear from the whole action of the Government in regard to this Bill that they are not now trying to improve the lot of any class in Scotland—owners, occupiers or ratepayers. Nothing would disappoint them so much as seeing their measure become law. Is that an uncharitable statement? Have you not proofs of its accuracy writ large in the last additions made to the Statute-book last session? We know what the principles of the Government are with regard to small holdings for the greater part of this island; we know what their principles are with regard to Ireland, because we have an eloquent speech in favour of peasant proprietors whenever the Chief Secretary for Ireland addresses us upon law and order in that country. We know, therefore, their views are diametrically opposite to the principles embodied in this Bill. The inference is obvious. This Bill is not intended to carry out a legislative policy; it is intended to be part of an attack upon the other House of Parliament. I think that very unprincipled; I also think it very inept. These constitutional revolutions are not as easy as the Prime Minister appears to suppose. Any party who mean to carry them out must take a little more pains in the methods they adopt and use those methods at a more fortunate moment for themselves. You will never get up genuine enthusiasm for Bills so preposterous in their framework as these two measures. I do not deny that at this moment Scottish Members opposite represent by far the larger number of Scottish constituencies, and that they would naturally look with a favourable eye upon any legislative proposal brought forward by their own Government, especially when they are told it is going to further some ulterior political object such as that of which the right hon. Gentleman has spoken with such candour to-night. But the Bills, apart from that, excite no enthusiasm in Scotland. Your measures for the purpose for which you have adopted them are bad. They are particularly bad as Bills. They are bad as machinery for getting up public enthusiasm against the House of Lords. Even if they were much better—even if they were masterly performances, which we should suppose by the manner in which they are brought in, without the alteration of a single comma, the Prime Minister thinks them, and even if they were as good as some of the Prime Minister's colleagues think them bad, I venture to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he and his Government are now in no condition to carry out these great revolutions. I do not now and I have never attached undue importance to by-elections. I do not now and I never have, whether they were against the Party of which I am a member or in favour of it, and I think it is quite possible to exaggerate their significance. At all events I do not build on them more than this, that a Government which has had the experience which the right hon. Gentleman's has recently had may have it in its power to do a great deal of legislative work, but it is not in a condition to carry out a great revolution. The huge battalions opposite may be diminished only by a unit or two here and there, but you cannot carry out revolutions unless you have something more behind you, and that something the right hon. Gentleman has lost, never to be regained. I am not, of course, forecasting the destinies of the great Party of which he is the leader; I am speaking of this Parliament, and this Parliament has already lost the power to carry through great revolutionary methods. That power has gone, and will never be recovered. So far as this Resolution relates to procedure I have stated my objections to it; so far as it is a part of that larger campaign which the right hon. Gentleman is directing against the other House I say that it will not only fail, but that everybody knows it will fail, that its failure is writ large and already its doom is sealed and that that part of the programme of the right hon. Gentleman he had better abandon as quickly and with as much dignity as he can.

The right hon. Gentleman has been betrayed in the stress of his peroration into rhetorical audacities some of which I think, after sober reflection, he will a little regret; yet his speech as a whole contained so many valuable admissions, so few serious criticisms of the Resolution of my right hon. friend, that I think I ought really to be rather grateful for the admissions than disposed to deal in any very grave spirit with the criticisms. But in view of his concluding remarks I must repudiate in the clearest and most emphatic terms, not only on behalf of the Prime Minister but on behalf of the whole Party who sit on these benches, the character which the right hon. Gentleman has thought it worthy and becoming to attribute to us—that we are playing the part of gross, almost avowed, political hypocrites, pretending to have the interests of the Scottish agricultural population at heart; that we are really like unscrupulous gamesters staking trust money for the purpose of gaining some private ends of our own. That is not a representation which it is becoming of the right hon. Gentleman to make of his political opponents, and it is not one which will awaken any response in any part of the kingdom. When he tells us that by some secret process of divination he knows that the people of Scotland do not care for this legislation, I venture to tell him, with all respect to him as a most distinguished Scotsman, that I go elsewhere if I want to find an authentic organ of public opinion. I go to the representatives of the Scottish people, and when I find that by an overwhelming majority, and without any change of opinion this year as compared with last, they are in favour and have the strongest desire for both these measures, we have the strongest reason for believing that we have the opinion of the people of Scotland behind us. Now let me go further and deal with the more serious part of the right hon. Gentleman's argument. The right hon. Gentleman told us that the Motion did not come upon him as a surprise, but on the contrary it was the result of distinct and definite pledges which my right hon. friend the Prime Minister gave to the House and the country last year—an admission I gladly note. He told us further, that so far from regarding the Motion as disrespectful, he considers it convenient, and even deferential, to the House of Lords. I am not sure that it was entirely conceived in that sense, but we are very glad to find it possesses that virtue in addition to many others. What really is the right hon. Gentleman's criticism? He tells us this proposal embodies in a particular case—I shall say a word or two in a moment as to the case itself—the principle of what used to be called carrying over—a principle of which he says he has long been an advocate—although I do not remember, by the way, that he has done much to carry it to fruition, but which was denounced and repudiated by two such great Parliamentary authorities as Mr. Gladstone and Sir W. Harcourt. What was the ground that Mr. Gladstone took in objecting to carrying over? It was the ground, first, that public opinion in the country might have shown a change of direction, and, secondly, that it would preclude the House of Commons from reconsidering in the light of fresh sources of information the precise form in which legislation was sent to the other House. If those are arguments against carrying over, neither of them applies to this Motion. This is not carrying over. On the contrary, it proposes to give to the House the opportunity upon a Second Reading debate of declaring whether or not they, as representing the opinion of the country, are still in favour of the principles of both these measures. I was rather amused to hear the right hon. Gentleman's arguments against cast-iron legislation. When I cast my memory back, as some of us can, to the proceedings of the last Parliament, and when I remember the Education Act of the right hon. Gentleman—I am speaking of the Bill of 1899, which was spoken of as if it were inspired and of which we were not allowed to alter so much as a comma, and which, after being sent to the House of Lords, was passed into law—you have not only here an opportunity of a Second Reading, and therefore the means of saying whether the House of Commons, as representing the country, is of the same opinion or not, but we are also giving the House the Committee Stage in which reasonable Amendments may be brought forward which will receive the respectful consideration of the Government. So that whatever objections there may be to the principles of carrying over, whatever arguments Mr. Gladstone and Sir William Harcourt used against carrying over, they have no application whatever to the present Resolution. What does the right hon. Gentleman's argument come to? Analysed and sifted it is reduced to one single point, namely, whether or not during last session these Bills did or not receive adequate discussion. Upon that point I join issue with him. I take the Scottish Land Bill. No one suggests that it did not receive mature and adequate discussion on Second Reading. It is true it was sent to a Standing Committee, and that, in the opinion of the right hon. Gentleman, was a nefarious proceeding, because the Bill contained a number of controversial proposals. Why was it sent? Because it was a Scottish measure dealing entirely and exclusively with Scottish interests, and the only way of bringing to bear in detail the expert and the conjoint opinion of the representatives of the people of Scotland was to send it to a Committee on which every one of the Members for Scotland could sit. It is true that there was a small knot of English Members on the Committee. I attended one day part of the day.

For half an hour.

Yes, and that half-hour was quite enough to give a good sample of the way the Committee spent its time. I do not believe there is anybody who sat on that Committee—I see the hon. Baronet the Member for London is in his place. I do not know whether he was a member of the Committee or not, but I am quite sure that if he was he was a most assiduous attendant.

I did not miss a day.

But I will say that if by some chance or mischance some of the English Members had removed themselves the Bill would have taken about half the time in Committee that it did. I am not saying anything invidious as to the value of the contributions they made; I am simply stating a plain matter of fact. The right hon. Gentleman has said, and I was astounded to hear him—because he, like myself, was not present at the proceedings of the Committee—that not a single one of the main pivotal principles of the Bill was ever discussed adequately in that Committee. I can only say that, in the opinion of the Secretary for Scotland, who is in charge of the Bill, and I think I may say the great bulk of the Scottish Members, there was not a single cardinal principle that was not discussed and divided upon. The right hon. Gentleman gave us an illustration in the question of the Land Court, but if I am right, the question not of the composition of such a Court, but whether there should or should not be a Land Court was discussed and divided upon by the Committee.

What does a Committee exist for but to discuss details?

The right hon. Gentleman asks what a Committee is for but to discuss details. The whole point of his charge is that there was no time to discuss the principles.

The right hon. Gentleman unintentionally misrepresents me. What I complain of is that the cardinal principles which ought to have been discussed in detail were not discussed in detail at all.

The facts speak for themselves. For about three months the Bill was in Committee upstairs, then it was three nights here in the House on Report, and there was a debate again on Third Reading, and I say it is idle, under modern conditions, to speak of any measure which has passed through that ordeal as if it was a measure which did not represent the considered and mature judgment of the House. The Valuation Bill was a very complicated measure. It went through the Standing Committee in so business-like a spirit that the closure was not once moved, and I never heard anybody until to-day say the details were not adequately threshed out. The subject had been before the House on three or four occasions, we had debates on Second Reading, session after session, in which not the "irresponsible faddists," but the greatest authorities representing all the different sections of the House took part. It is idle, therefore, to say that the measure was sprung by the Government on the House for the first time when the Government introduced it last year. On the pure question on tactics, therefore, which is the only question remaining when the right hon. Gentleman's indictment is analysed, I say that both these Bills last session were amply and adequately discussed, and that the additional facilities which the Government are affording in this Resolution for their further discussion now are quite enough for any legitimate purpose.

said whatever might be said by Members of the front Opposition Bench those who sat on the back benches ought to enter a very strong protest against the new procedure introduced by this Resolution. Everyone desired to do away with guillotine Motions, but whenever a new one had been proposed the Opposition had been faced with the tu quoque argument that whatever the Government was doing their predecessors had done the same thing. This Resolution, however, was not supported by any precedent; it was an entirely novel proceeding and anybody who looked at the Paper must admit that the Resolution was one that absolutely destroyed the legislative character of the House of Commons. The Resolution was a means of putting before the House certain Bills, and at the same time of withdrawing from the House any opportunity of deliberately discussing them. To give them the limited time of two days was not fair, having regard to the consideration which should be given to any Bill, even if it had been considered to the fullest extent in the past. He desired to enter the very strongest protest at the first opportunity against such a precedent having been made. It was remarkable that almost the first business the House had to transact was to pass a more stringent form of guillotine than anything they had had before, although the Chancellor of the Exchequer had said, on the debate on the Address, when he was taxed as to measures being carried without adequate discussion—

"We shall try by some common agreement to arrive at a better method of disposing of our work ";

and ended up by saying—

"We ought to find ample opportunities to discuss our extensive programme. At any rate, we are going to make the attempt."

Was this the attempt to give them adequate discussion for that large programme which was put forward, when two Bills were going to be passed in four days? Was this the sort of spirit in which it was likely the Government could call upon those who were opposed to them to come to some mutual workable agreement as to the conduct of business? He confessed it did not look as if they were going to have any such reasonable proposal in regard to procedure as he had hoped might be arrived at, so as to avoid constant appeals to the House to pass guillotine Resolutions. The right hon. Gentleman had referred to the ample discussion given to the Bills of last year, and had said the facts spoke for themselves. The unfortunate thing was that they could not refer to the facts. There was no official report to which they could turn and know what went on in Committee. He would have thought every Scottish Member of Parliament could very well have taken part if they had had these Bills in Committee of the Whole House. They had undoubtedly a special prerogative last year in connection with the Scottish Committee, a privilege not extended to English Members when dealing with a similar Bill early last session. But there were questions in that Bill which required very careful consideration at the hands of English Members. There was the great question of the dividing up of the Board of Agriculture. They had in this session had the suggestion that the Board of Agriculture should be given a higher status and elevated to the rank of the older offices of the Crown. Would it be as important a body if it had the whole of Scotland separated from it? Would the country only in the last few days have been altogether satisfied if, when that sudden outbreak of contagious disease happened at Edinburgh, they had known there were two State departments interested in agriculture instead of only one, and that instead of being able to go straight to one Board of Agriculture in England, any matter which affected both countries would have to depend upon the procedure and policy of another office in Scotland. This question was of vast importance, and yet it was never discussed in the House at all by those really interested in the matter. It might have been discussed upstairs, but on Report the special provision in regard to the Board of Agriculture never received full discussion. Therefore, he did not think if they took merely that particular instance it could be said that it was fair that English Members should be shut out from the discussion, or that the Bill had been fully discussed at the hands of the House of Commons. The Prime Minister had said the chief principles of the Bill were the land court and fixity of tenure. It seemed rather a curious thing that only a very few months before this Bill the Government were dealing with the question of agricultural holdings, and they passed an Act which dealt with land tenure for agricultural holdings, and yet they did not say the chief features of agricultural tenure in Scotland were a land court and fixity of tenure. It was only subsequently that they found these principles were to be the chief features of the Bill. The Prime Minister had spoken of the increasing popularity of the Bill in Scotland, but could not bring any proof of it save that the English Bill had proved popular. If the method adopted in the English Bill had proved popular he would have thought that supported the action of the House of Lords in wishing to extend it to Scotland. He remembered last year when the guillotine Resolution was passed in connection with the Land Bill, the Prime Minister or the Chancellor of the Exchequer stated that the closure had only been asked for fifty-three time in the Grand Committee and only given fifty times—an average of one to two-and-a-half or three hours discussion. A Bill which had been closured fifty times in Grand Committee was in a very exceptional position. They had been told that the Land Values Bill and the English Bill passed without a single closure; and that neither under the old nor the new procedure had he ever put the closure on any Bill before him in Grand Committees. When one knew what was the usual experience in Grand Committees, to say that a Bill had not been closured in the most extraordinary way seemed to be carrying the argument a little too far. The Land Values Bill had been read a first time under the ten minutes rule early in the session, and read a second time in the middle of July. It went to the Grand Committee late in July, and came up for Report and Third Reading on 8th August. That could hardly be said to have been a satisfactory discussion on a Bill, the importance of which now they perhaps rather minimised, but the importance of which at all events to English Members was very great. They had always been told that if the principle of the Bill was accepted in Scotland, it was to be made a precedent for action of a similar character in England. When they had had before them the difficulties in connection with this matter, Members not representing Scotland must take a deep interest in this Bill, and must feel satisfied that, coming from a Governmental source, and not from a private Member, it had not received adequate discussion at the hands of Members not connected with Scotland. Both these Bills were forced through the House, perhaps for certain reasons, under circumstances which placed a great number of Members under great disadvantage in the discussion, and therefore when they came forward again, whether they were in the same words or not, they should certainly receive a great deal more discussion than they would get under this Resolution. It was all very well for the Government to say they had done this to give the House of Lords full opportunity of discussion, but they could not forget that when an appeal was made from below the gangway last year to the Prime Minister to pass one portion of the Agricultural Holdings Bill which was thought to be desirable and necessary, they were told they were not to have that which was beneficial to their constituents, because it was not tactics. That was at the bottom of the whole thing. The Government wanted something to found their campaign upon. Surely that remark vitiated everything that could now be put forward in connection with these two particular measures. He thought they were bound to protest and that the protests ought to come from those who were entirely unconnected with official life. It was those Members who had no official position whose rights and privileges were most attacked by Resolutions of this sort. It was high time that they declined to add precedent upon precedent in connection with this particular form of procedure which was distasteful to every Member of the House, and it was for that reason that he raised his solemn protest against it.

said that with respect to one of the Bills dealt with in this Resolution he was of opinion that no reason was advanced in response to objections made to the vital principles of the Bill, whereas in the case of the other Bill the objections were fairly and squarely met. He had seen too many years of time wasted in the House to be very particular as to the means taken to shorten unnecessary discussion, and so far as the prososals now being made were concerned they would have his support. Nevertheless, he had his doubts as to whether they would further the passing of legislation, but the Government were the best judges in their own case, and he would support their Resolution. He did not think sufficient distinction had been drawn between the two Bills or between the manner in which they were to be discussed. In the case of the Land Values Bill it was carried without the closure, and the objections raised were fairly and squarely met after full discusson. Many important Amendments were freely accepted by the Lord Advocate, and they would have to be tested by experience before any actual change was made in the law of rating. He thought the Opposition were making a vast mistake in regard to this question of the readjustment of the incidence of local taxation, or even the re-allocation of revenue from building values. It would not be for ever that those would reap who had not sown in regard to land values. The Opposition had no alternative scheme and they had already exhausted their powers of initiative in the Agricultural Relief Rating Act. With regard to the other Bill he did not blame the House of Lords for refusing to consider it on the last day of the session, and the reasonable business course for the House of Commons to take now was to send it back to the Upper Chamber with as little delay as possible. In the House of Commons they had had their full say upon it, and it was a serious proposal. Although no doubt it might be improved, yet it contained an essential element in any effective policy. As to the Scottish Small Landholders Bill the situation was different. If there was any hope of altering it it would be worth while opposing the closure, but he did not think there was any such hope. It had been suggested that this Bill had been brought up as part of a strategical movement against the other House. He had never suggested that himself, but if any foundation could be found for such a statement it was evident that there had been a missfire, because this particular Bill would rehabilitate a second Chamber and in fact create a raison d'être for a separate Chamber. The need for land reform was a serious reality, but this Bill, with singular perversity, missed the evils which ought to be remedied and detroyed the good which had already been achieved. He was now advancing reasons why no time should be wasted on this particular Bill, and he suggested that another day should be given to the Land Values Bill. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had stated that it was merely a question of method between the English Bill and the Scottish Bill, but to his mind it was a question of vital principles. But those principles having been accepted by the Government and the House he could not see the object of wasting time over the application of the methods of applying those principles. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talked of methods, but was the importation into Scotland of dual ownership and the abolition of responsible management merely a matter of method? Was the abolition of the economic standard of rent a matter of method? To his mind they were vital principles. No doubt the Secretary for Scotland had made conflicting statements upon this point, but they were nevertheless all points of first magnitude, on which it was hopeless to expect that there could be any way found for adequate discussion on the Closure Resolution. If the House and the Government accepted those pernicious principles then it was a matter of perfect indifference as to the particular way in which they were introduced into Scotland. Those being the real issues, he did not think they needed to waste any more time upon the details. He claimed to know something of the people living on the country side of Scotland, and he might state that he had never met anyone whose opinion was worth having who believed in this Bill. The Solicitor-General had stated that the opposition to the Bill was due to class ignorance.

No.

said he had read a statement to that effect. He knew of his own shortcomings and he was aware that there was ignorance, and that he was among the ignorant, but he had such knowledge of the land and the people to feel impelled to back his policy either wholly or in part against the policy of the Government. He was not so sure that he had as good a right to speak for the urban population, for if anyone had been returned to the House by the landless it was himself, and it was on behalf of the landless that he had given his opposition to this Bill and his support to alternative proposals. The real way to promote land reform at the present time was not to wrangle over the details of a dead Bill but to perfect a true and effective policy. They all wanted to see more people brought back to the land. They had before them the inquiries which had been held, including the independent inquiry into the working of the Crofters Acts and their applicability to the rest of the country. He would take one day off the time to be allotted for the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill and give it to the Land Values (Scotland) Bill because the chances of that Bill were unnecessarily but gravely imperilled. The true starting point for the reform of land values was the Report of Lord Balfour's Commission. He thought the Lord Advocate attached considerable weight to that Report, but he did not know what weight was attached to the Report of the inquiry into the working of the Crofters Acts. Nor did he know how the Government allowed so long a spin to that March hare—the breaking of feu-contracts. A great many innocent people had suffered from that proposal, and that had really prejudiced the cause of this Bill.

thought the House might discuss this question on broader grounds than that taken by the hon. Member for the Leith Burghs. The question was really one of Parliamentary procedure, and it was a mere incident in the discussion that the proposal submitted by the Prime Minister referred to two Scottish Bills. From the point of view of the minority section of the House they must always approach such proposals as the Government had made that afternoon with a great deal of suspicion. The minority must not lightly allow freedom of discussion to be taken away by any guillotine Resolution under any excuse whatever. The question which they had seriously to discuss was whether this was a guillotine Resolution which deprived the minority of the right of free discussion. If it was, the Labour Party in the House was not going to give the Government any support, but rather active opposition in the attempt to carry the Resolution. If it was not, the Labour Party was prepared to consider the proposition on its own merits. Since the Labour Members came into the House nothing had struck them more than the desire to discuss, to rediscuss, and to re-rediscuss every proposal, Bill, or Amendment, brought under the notice of the House. When adequate discussion had taken place they were told that the privileges of Members of the House necessitated discussion again. Jealous as the Labour Members were of the rights of minorities in the House, they were not going to subscribe to that absurd proposition. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London divided his speech into two parts. In the first part he complained that the Government were in too great haste, and in the second part that they were not hasty enough. The right hon. Gentleman stated that although the Small Landholders Bill was before the Standing Committee twenty-two days, the cardinal principle dealing with the land court was not even discussed. Surely that was a very serious reflection on the Members of the Standing Committee. Although he was not a Member of the Committee he knew from reports which had leaked out how the time was consumed. They were told who had made many speeches and who had repeated their speeches. He was, therefore, not in the least influenced by the statement that although the Committee sat twenty-two days the cardinal principles were never discussed at all. That was the fault absolutely of the Committee. The Bill was intricate; it contained very important proposals, and it sought to establish important principles, but there was not a single business Member of the House who would not say that in the course of twenty-two sittings—some of which were prolonged—there was not adequate time to discuss those important principles. Supposing there was much more in the argument than there actually was, what guarantee had they that if the Government had introduced the Bill in the ordinary way and asked a Second Reading under the ordinary rules of the House, it would be more adequately discussed this session than last? What was the use of asking them to spend twenty-eight days of the precious time of this session in discussing the Bill, and then to be told after the whole process had been gone through that the cardinal principles of the Bill had never even been considered by the Members of the Committee? If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the City of London had given a guarantee that afternoon that if the Bill had been introduced under the ordinary rules of the House, and that the cardinal principles would have been adequately discussed and settled within twenty-two sittings, the Opposition would have been giving the Government an adequate offer why the guillotine proposal should not be carried. They all recognised that the business machinery of the House was not quite so good as they would like it to be. They had an experience last session which they were not going to repeat at the end of this session. The right hon. Gentleman's proposal was that twenty-two days should be given to the Committee stage, three days to the Report stage, and three days to the Third Reading stage. Why should they waste twenty-eight days in coming to precisely the same decisions as were arrived at last session? They saw no reason during the past few months for changing their decisions, and therefore they should go on as fast as possible with the other business which would be brought before them in due course. There was a great deal in the argument that this guillotine Resolution would be taken as a precedent to justify the rejection of Bills in another place if they were sent up after a certain date. The Labour Party had no objection to the other place taking that course. When they did take that course the Labour Members would make the same speeches about them in the country as they made during the recent recess, and the same result would take place. The result had been that the Labour Party candidates at the by-elections had enormously increased their votes and come much nearer to winning elections than ever before. If there were any outstanding difficulties that were to be brought to a head by this procedure on the part of the Government the sooner they were brought to a head the better. The Labour Party would be only too delighted to assist the Government in bringing these difficulties to a head. They supported the Resolution for two main reasons. In the first place it was not an attempt on the part of the Government to protect itself against free discussion, but it was an attempt made to protect the House against another place. This Resolution did not raise the question of the limitation of free discussion; it simply protected this House against the inducements the other place might have to compel it to waste its time session after session upon Bills which the other place would not accept. The second reason was that this was a Step forward in the readjustment of the Standing Orders which would enable the House to use the work done in previous sessions. As to the best scheme for carrying that out it would not become him to enter on that question at all. If the Government had made up its mind that the Bill did not require redrafting it was perfectly entitled to say so to the House, and it had a right to say that it would carry the Bill through its remaining stages in the way proposed so that the other place might continue the studies which were so rudely interrupted by the shooting season which unfortunately opened about the middle of August. Therefore, because this was a defence of this House against another place, and because they took this as the first step towards a business-like and working arrangement for carrying over the work of one session which remained uncompleted to the next session, the Party with whom he was associated would give it their most hearty support.

said that the hon. Member for Leicester had shown quite clearly that the real object of the procedure embodied in the Prime Minister's Resolution was to strike at the other place. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were, however, most indignant when it was suggested by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition that that was really the object. He thought that no clearer condemnation of this Motion could have been made than that which came from the hon. Member for Leigh Burghs, who said that the Bill was so bad that the sooner it got to the House of Lords and was there done away with the better, because no amount of time spent upon it could by any possibility amend it. That was one view to take of the Bill, and to his mind a very natural view, but it was hardly the view that one would suppose could be taken seriously—for the reason that if applied to other Bills of a similar kind it would be rather a strong argument for enforcing the closure in this House. As to whether the discussions of the Bill last session were adequate or the reverse, he wished to reply to what had been said by the hon. Member for Leicester which reflected very seriously upon Members of the Grand Committee. Allusion had been made to the land court, and it was said that that question came up very early—when Clause 3 was discussed—and that twenty-two days had been spent on the Bill altogether. But the Chancellor of the Exchequer failed to recollect the circumstances and was not quite accurate in saying that this question came up almost at the beginning of the proceedings of the Grand Committee. On turning to the official Report of the Committee, which was very short, he found that the question of the Land Court was never discussed at all on its merits. The first point that arose on Clause 3 was that it should be postponed. And there was sound reason for that Motion, because later on in the Bill Clause 19 referred to the jurisdiction of the land court and it was considered advisable by those opposed to the Bill that Clauses 3 and 19 should be in juxtaposition. The mover of the Motion to postpone Clause 3 under a very strict ruling of the Chairman was not entitled to discuss Clause 3. Therefore the question whether a land court was to be set up or not was never discussed at all. The Report said—

"That the Secretary for Scotland claimed that the question be now put."

That closured the question of postponing the clause; and the next question put was that all of Clause 3 down to the words "not exceeding" should be agreed to—thus sweeping away pages of Amendments. It was, therefore, not right to say that the cardinal principles of the Bill had been adequately discussed. He strongly resented the hon. Member of Leicester's insinuation that there was a great deal of repetition and useless discussion especially by English Members. He absolutely denied that insinuation. He asked any hon. member of the Committee whether he thought, for an instance that the first three days discussions were in the least wasted. There was an Amendment dealing with the question of fixity of tenure, the fixing of rents by the land court, and the bringing in the whole of the rest of Scotland under the same procedure as the crofting districts. He denied that these discussions were fruitless or wasted or that Members did not treat these great and important questions in the serious way they deserved. He would be right in saying that for a considerable time more Members spoke in favour of the Bill than against it, and he thought that insinuations of the kind made by the hon. Member for Leicester, who was not present a single day in Committee, were not justified. The hon. Member began his speech as if he were going to see whether the Liberal Party intended to stick up for or ignore the rights of minorities; but he concluded by saying that he and his party had agreed to support the Government. The reason for that was not far to seek. The Motion was a part of the attack on the House of Lords. He wondered whether when the hon. Member talked of the rights of minorities he seriously thought of what the effect such a Motion as was now before the House would have on the House itself? The present Government had carried the system of guillotining Bills to a far greater extent than any proceeding Government, and already they had deprived private Members of the right of discussing important measures. Last session the two most important Bills were the English Small Holdings Bill and the Scottish Small Landholders Bill. Both run concurrently through Grand Committees and both were of great interest to many on that side of the House who thought they ought to have an opportunity of discussing them; but that was impossible. This was one of the gross infringements on the rights of private Members, to remedy which and to restore the dignity of the House of Commons the Prime Minister came in with his large majority. That was one right gone; but they were now to have another right taken from them, and that was, even going through the farce of discussion in Grand Committees, because to allot three days for the discussion of this Small Landholders Bill was nothing but a farce. He wondered if any hon. Member had taken the trouble to read through the Bill as now introduced and compare it with the Bill as passed by the House of Commons last session. But supposing the Bill was identical with that carried through the House last session, he asked whether it would be possible to move even the most cardinal Amendments which ought to be discussed? He did not believe anyone thought it would be possible to discuss the Bill even in a superficial way in the time at the disposal of the House. This further enroachment on the rights of private Members might have very disastrous consequences in the future. What was to prevent the Government coming down to the House in the future and saying: "Here is a Bill to carry out some proposal"—no matter what it might be. "It has been talked of in the country; it is well known to everybody; the arguments for it are quite obvious; therefore we will give you one day for discussion "? That would be only going one shade further than what was now proposed, and therefore the rights of the House of Commons were being gradually taken away from hon. Members by the Executive. It seemed to him to be perfectly ridiculous for them to be sent to the House to represent their constituents if they were to have no opportunity whatever of either discussing or modifying legislation. Some hon. Members opposite seemed to be quite content to sit quiet and allow all their advantages to be taken from them, although when in Opposition their conduct was very different. It was, therefore, very necessary that someone should rise and protest against the invasion of the rights of private Members. He would like to say a word about the aspect of the Motion with regard to its violation of the rights of the House of Lords, for that was at the bottom of the minds of hon. Gentlemen opposite. It gave the Resolution its importance and was the cause of a great deal of the fondness with which hon. Members opposite regarded it. Hon. Members talked as if the House of Lords wasted the time of the House of Commons, and as if the House of Lords was not a factor which the electors had in their minds when they returned the present Government to power. It was, it seemed to him, assumed, a great deal more than hon. Members, even with their great majority, were entitled to assume, that everything which they proposed must be the will of the country and that the House of Lords must be coerced into passing it. He did not know whether that assumption was one which hon. Members entertained, but he was certain of this, that the by-elections had shown one thing very clearly, and that was that if it had not been for the presence of the House of Lords, which had suspended judgment over some of those measures which were brought before it, the majority of the Government would not have been so great as it was. He desired to enter his most hearty protest against this Resolution.

who was indistinctly heard, was understood to say that he did not see how it was possible in these days to get any Bill which was a controversial one—and these Bills were highly controversial—through the House of Commons without some kind of closure. The days had gone by when Bills, even of second-rate importance, could be passed without it. When an Opposition was called upon to consider a particular closure, they always found it the very worst kind of closure which had ever been put forward, and the Government that brought forward the proposal always thought that it was the best possible scheme suggested by the best possible Government. He had voted against the closure when he was on the opposite side of the House again and again, and he should support it from that side of the House with equanimity. There was a great deal of cant talked up and down the country and in the House of Commons about closure. But he would at the same time like to point out that there was one novel point about this particular Resolution which had not been referred to that afternoon. It was that this was the first time they had two Bills included in one guillotine Motion. Hitherto they had always had Motions dealing with a particular Bill, or a particular stage of a Bill, but here they had two Bills—the Small Landowners Bill and the Land Values Bill—brought within the one Motion, and he did not see why if that was done on this occasion it should not be developed in the future so that they might have half a dozen Bills next session similarly dealt with, and in the next Parliament they might have the Government mapping out the time of the session and saying that so many days should be devoted to each Bill. He did regard that as a very grave and novel proposition, and thought that the point was worthy of consideration by the House, whether they should permit this innovation of grouping Bills, by way of one guillotine Motion, and so push any number of Bills through in one discussion in the House of Commons. The point had been raised that these Bills could not be properly discussed or amended, and it seemed to him that the time given under the Resolution was either too short or too long. If the Bills were amended in Committee they would have three days discussion, but every one knew that they would not he so amended, and that the amount of time which would be allowed to them would be two days, which he submitted was far too short a period. If, however, it was intended to send these Bills up line by line as they were to the House of Lords then the time was too long. Coming back to the point which he had before made, he regarded the grouping of Bills as a very serious matter, and as one which ought to be seriously considered.

did not think he could congratulate His Majesty's Government on the motives of the support accorded to the Resolution from their supporters on the other side of the House, or their allies below the gangway. The hon. Member who had just sat down told them that he had voted with equal pleasure for the closure and against it, and that he himself was prepared to increase the power of the closure, and he thought that in the best of all possible worlds the more they had of it the better. Following up the hon. Member's argument, he presumed he would be glad, and for himself he would not be surprised if the Government shortly proposed that all Bills mentioned in the King's Speech were comprised in one happy dispatch and appointed to become law within a limited measure of time. But the Government had another supporter in the hon. Member for Leith Burghs who said that he would vote for this Resolution. And on what ground? Because he thought that the particular Bill to which it referred was so hoplessly bad that it was not worth discussing and that any time devoted to discussing it—even the three days allotted—would be lost time. They knew the hon. Gentleman's feelings towards that Bill. He was one of the most effective critics of it, and there was one thing which made his criticism more serious, and that was that no one on the Committee was better acquainted than he was with the circumstances with which the Bill professed to deal. The Government had also had another supporter in the hon. Member for Leicester, who affected to disregard the interests of the Scottish people and to look to something larger, the general privileges of free speech in the House of Commons. But what were the limitations of that privilege which the hon. Member as the protagonist of the Labour Party was prepared to agree to? He hoped that his followers would take note of the exact limits of free speech which were claimed at the hands of the Government by the Labour Party. It was a free speech which meant that when a certain number of days had been given to the discussion of the Bill, without inquiry as to how that discussion had ranged, without inquiry as to what were the important principles involved in the Bill, simply because so many days and so many hours had been spent upon it, that was to be pronounced to be an adequate allowance of time, and the hon. Member as representing the Labour Party said he would be satisfied with that dole from the Government. But the hon. Member said something more; he said the Government might have withdrawn this Resolution, or given a longer time to the Bill, or done away with all restrictions, if the Leader of the Opposition had guaranteed that the measure would not be discussed for more than a certain number of days. He did not know whether the members of the Labour Party were disposed to take from their Leader any such strict orders as to the limitation of their speeches and the time of discussion, but he did not think the right hon. Gentleman upon whom he looked as his Leader would be prepared to pledge his followers under any circumstances, and no matter what were the difficulties of the questions involved, to confine the discussion to a certain number of days prescribed by the Government. They asserted for themselves, whatever the Labour Party might do, some more serious measure of liberty of speech in this House. Could there, he asked, be two Bills more impossible than those now under discussion to yoke together in this Procrustean bed? The one was a Bill with many clauses, many principles, and a vast amount of machinery to settle. Not one of the clauses of the Bill could be discussed without hearing the arguments of the experts on both sides. The other Bill was a tentative one, and involved a very serious and they thought a pernicious principle, though he knew that the Solicitor-General held that their opposition was only due to crass ignorance. But the principle could be discussed within certain limits as it involved no elaborate details. How the Government could say that these two Bills could be measured by the same standard he could not understand. It was not only, however, the provisions of the Bills but their history which differentiated them. The Land Bill went before a Grand Committee of Scottish and other Members upstairs. It was in charge of the Secretary for Scotland. For the first few days, the proceedings were conducted perfectly amicably, and during that time the arguments and the speeches were furnished quite as much by the supporters of the right hon. Gentleman as by his opponents. But a ukase went out that speeches were to cease, and from that time they came exclusively from the adverse critics of the Bill. Those who wished for some modification or who were doubtful in regard to the proceedings sat silent at the behest of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for Scotland. No arguments were advanced by the right hon. Gentleman, who time after time with automatic regularity rose and said that the Government had carefully considered the question; they had made up their minds that this was the proper course to be followed, and he must now move the closure. That was the only argument for that course that the right hon. Gentleman thought proper to pursue. They all knew his general courtesy and were not disposed to be hard upon him in any way, but the right hon. Gentleman was not made to be a tyrant. He was made with better qualities, but, unfortunately, he had thought fit to abandon argument and to proceed by automatic closure, which was moved as many as fifty-three times in the Committee. What was the course with regard to the other Bill, which was in the charge of the Lord Advocate? The closure was never once moved, and in two or three days the Bill was passed through Committee and, pernicious as they thought its central principle to be, it was, at all events, to some extent adequately discussed. The Prime Minister said they were determined in their action because they knew that they had the great mass of the opinion of Scotland behind them. He would remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Government had not always been so adamantine in their views or so faithful to them. There was a Land Bill in 1906 as well as in 1907, and in the interval between the two the views of the Government had very materially matured. They would have liked to know how much further the views of the Government had matured in 1908. In the Valuation of Land Bill the evolution of the views of the Government was even more remarkable, because though the Government voted in 1906 for the Second Reading of a private Member's Valuation Bill, the Lord-Advocate said he could not; admit the principle embodied in that Bill as to the taxation of existing feu duties. Before the end of 1906, the Solicitor-General at least had come to a very different opinion as to the taxation of feu duties. The House would like to know if that Bill was revived again, with all the fresh knowledge and new considerations, whether the difference of opinion between the Lord-Advocate and Solicitor-General for Scotland had developed or had ceased; whether the facts in regard to the taxation of feu duties had shown any fresh divergence or not. The Prime Minister, he believed, had given an assurance that no existing contracts would be interfered with, and the House would find great difficulty in reconciling that assurance with the statement of his views by the Solicitor-General. He was ready to admit for the purposes of argument that the Government had a majority of Scottish opinion in their favour at present; they had the largest number of seats in this House. But in their wildest moments did it not occur to the Government that there were hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland who doubted the wisdom of this proposed legislation? Did the Government doubt that, though they won in the last general election, there was a large body of opinion in Scotland that doubted the wisdom and the expediency of the Government's proposals? Did they imagine that they would initiate wise legislation which would be broad based on the people's will if they did not conciliate the doubters by at least showing them that their arguments were listened to? And did they think they would conciliate them by an indiscriminate use of the closure? People of Scotland were very different from what he believed them to be if they were conciliated by such a process. Even the Government's own supporters would look with distrust on a procedure which turned a deaf ear to the arguments of their opponents and administered the closure indiscriminately in this way. It was not a question of closuring those who spoke in this House. It did not matter much whether their mouths were closed or not. It was a question of the men who were behind the Members of Parliament, the men in the country who, mistaken as the Government believed them to be, had opinions and who were disappointed and almost rebellious when they believed that their opinions were denied a hearing in this House. Did the Government think they would conciliate those men by telling them that the opinions they wished to see represented in this House, and the doubts which they honestly entertained had been crushed into silence? The hon. Member for Leicester had said, let the Government do with this Bill as they liked. It was their business, let them change and alter it as they pleased, he would vote for it within the limited time of three days which they allowed. But so far as he (Sir Henry Craik) was concerned, he and those who thought with him claimed some larger measure of Parliamentary freedom than that indicated by the hon. Member.

said that what they had to consider was whether the Bills had had adequate discussion, and whether hon. Gentlemen opposite were justified in fighting against the closuring Resolution. He thought they would find that not only had there been ample discussion, but that they were singularly fortunate in having another opportunity of discussing the Bills at all. The Licensing Bill of the last. Conservative Government had not been discussed in the country when it was introduced. It came up in the House for the first time and though passed no doubt by large majorities it was not passed by such large majorities as the present Bills. It then went to another place, and, fortunately for hon. Gentlemen opposite, when they were in power the other House was a "bourne from which no traveller returned" These Bills, passed as they were by vast majorities, were returned once more and hon. Gentlemen had been offered a second time to discuss them. It appeared to him that the time proposed to be allocated to the Bills was quite ample. Nothing would be gained by any longer discussion, and opinion neither in the House nor in the country would be altered. A good deal of discussion had taken place as to proceedings in Grand Committee. He was a member of that Committee and he was present at every sitting but one. He would not bandy charges of obstruction, but if in twenty-two days they could not discus-the Bill in such a Committee, then Parliamentary institutions were futile. Did hon. Members opposite say that if they discussed the Bill for twenty-two days in the House of Commons, as at present constituted, its mind would be changed in any essential detail? He did not for one moment believe it. Of course, hon. Gentlemen opposite might say that they wanted to show them up to the country. But he did not believe that there had been any Bills in the present generation which had been more considered in Scotland. They had had two recesses in which unfortunate Scottish Members like himself had had to talk about nothing else. He confessed he was sick of the Bills himself; they had talked so much about them. They had had speeches, not only by Scottish Members, but by Peers and Conservatives, led by the Leader of the Opposition. Scotland had been seldom so much honoured by Parliamentary talent, and it was all upon these Bills. They had had the right hon. Gentleman the Member for South Dublin. The right hon. Gentleman was on the Grand Committee, and led the Opposition to the Bills. The Opposition created sometimes a considerable amount of heat and temper; but he could say that he doubted whether at the end there was any Member of that Commission more popular with the Scottish Members than the right hon. Gentleman. He came to Scotland and represented the view against the Bills. They had the Leader of the Opposition, who devoted the whole of his speech at Glasgow to the measures. There were no doubt some points on which the Scottish people did not thoroughly understand the political views of the Leader of the Opposition, but his view on these Bills was understood clearly and distinctly by everybody in Scotland. Not only had they had these leading lights, but they had had Lord Rosebery. He was accustomed to ploughing a lonely furrow, but it seemed to him (Mr. Crombie) that on this occasion he emerged from his lonely furrow and engaged in a regular ploughing match. Under these circumstances he claimed that it could not be said that the Bills had not been discussed threadbare. If they were discussed for weeks they would make no change in the opinion of the country, or in the voting of the House of Commons. Therefore, in the interests of Parliamentary time, was it possible or conceivable that more than two or three days should be wasted on the measures? He thought that if the Government had consented to give more time than they had done they would as trustees of the time of the House of Commons have committed a most serious offence.

said the Prime Minister had put forward as a reason for this Resolution that the Small Landholders Bill had been adequately discussed, because so much time was devoted to it in Committee upstairs. He wished to protest against the idea that a discussion in Committee was in any sense equivalent to a discussion in Committee of the Whole House where the speeches were reported, and the attention of the country was called to the measure. That advantage was altogether lacking in the Committee upstairs. Although this Bill had been discussed at considerable length, it had not had much effect upon public opinion. In regard to the Small Landholders Bill, that was a measure in regard to which he took a prominent part, and a distinct line of policy was pursued throughout in regard to it by the Unionist Party. They tried to induce the promoters of the Bill to accept an alteration with regard to the crofting areas, and to apply the principle of the English Bill to the South of Scotland. If the discussion had taken place on the floor of the House, public opinion would have been more influenced. He did not agree that further discussion would have no effect. They might just as well adopt the suggestion that after the introduction of the King's Speech the Government should bring forward a Closure Resolution closuring by compartments all the measures in that Speech, and providing that they must be passed in a month. The Unionist Party had fought this Bill throughout on recognised principles, and whenever the Small Landholders Bill was passed he ventured to say that it would be based on lines consistent with the attitude adopted by the Unionist Party on the Committee upstairs. He felt sure that if Scottish Members were left absolutely free to follow their own opinion they would gladly accept a compromise on the lines he had indicated, which would work for peace and happiness in the country districts in a way which the Government plan could never do. Had the Government last session accepted such a compromise this question would now have been comfortably settled on lines upon which similar portions of Scotland and England would have been treated alike, and the Crofters Act would have been extended in those districts where it was most suitable. That system would have suited the people of Scotland better [Cries of "No."] There were hundreds and thousands of Scotsmen who were in the habit of appealing to English Members for representation. He had received petitions from Scotsmen asking him if he could do anything to save them from their Member; consequently in that House he had not only to do his duty to his constituents in England, but he had an interest in Scotch legislation. He honestly believed that the Small Landholders Bill was never intended to pass. ["Oh, oh."] It was drafted in such a way to show that it was never intended to pass, but it was thought that it would serve as one of the snowballs with which the House of Lords was to be pelted. By such tactics, instead of undermining the position of the House of Lords the Government would find that they were fortifying and securing its position in the opinion of the great bulk of Scottish people. He could congratulate the Prime Minister upon a great many things, but not upon the ingenuousness of his ingenuity upon this question, although he could congratulate him heartily upon the transparency of his tactics.

said the speeches of the Leader of the Opposition were always interesting if not illuminating. He thought the speech he had just delivered might be described as thin and thrilling. The right hon. Gentleman had asked that the Small Landholders Bill should have adequate discussion; but what did he mean by that? He had had the honour or rather the painful duty of sitting on the Committee which dealt with this Bill, and as a new Member he confessed that he was more than surprised at the tactics adopted by those who were opposed to the measure. He might be wrong, but he held a very definite opinion that behind the rail for the public there were legal minds trained in all the trickery of forming and framing Amendments simply for the purpose of offering opposition for the measure. Many of those Amendments were merely repetition and when they failed the phraseology was altered, although the intention was actually the same, namely to waste the time of the Committee. Twenty-two days were occupied in that way. The hon. Member for Leith Burghs said he represented an urban district. He was wondering whether it was the Laird of Dalmeny rather than the electors of Leith Burghs. He claimed to know something about those electors, for he had addressed a meeting of probably some 2,000 or 3,000 on the Leith Links, and if the hon. Member for Leith had been present he felt sure that he would not have got the vote of confidence he seemed so confident about. He was prepared to challenge the hon. Member to meet him on Leith Links to defend the part he took during the proceedings of that Committee. With regard to what had been said about the Labour Party, they might be "young men in a hurry," but they had had a very severe training, and they were quite conscious of the needs of the democracy in this country. They knew there were a large number of people suffering terrible privations who were paying attention to Parliamentary action and watching their proceedings. It was his duty week by week to go all over the country, and he was continually being asked: "Why don't you do more?" When he complained that it was the fault of the Parliamentary machine he was asked: "Why don't you smash it?" Therein lay the danger. If hon. Members sitting on the Opposition side wished to save a catastrophe they ought to help to use the time of the House to pass useful legislation instead of framing so many Amendments. He appealed to the Opposition to save themselves. This Resolution was that two Bills which had been adequately discussed both in Parliament and in the country should be passed with limited discussion. The Scottish Small Landholders Bill occupied more than enough time during the twenty-eight days it was under consideration. As one who was looked upon as an extremely dangerous young man he had hazarded a recommendation or an appreciation of this particular Bill, and he was bound to confess that amongst audiences avowedly opposed to the Government he had heard very little objection to the Bill as an instalment of land reform. After the time which had been used in the country and upstairs discussing this matter he thought the Government were justified in bringing forward this particular Resolution. The Labour Party did not accept the statement that minorities must suffer; at any rate if they had to suffer they were not going to suffer silently. If the Closure was not applied to this measure the same brigade who opposed the Bill on the last occasion would be present again to carry out the same tactics, and in the interests of the dignity of the House and social reform the Government were justified in bringing forward this Resolution, which he hoped every Member of the Labour Party would support.

said the Resolution seemed to be an ingenious method of dodging round the Constitution, leading gradually towards government by oligarchy instead of by the free representatives of the people. But undoubtedly the Government deserved a considerable amount of well-justified criticism for suggesting that two Bills of such immense importance as these should be carried in the course of from four to six days, Bills both of which dealt with the whole incidence of local taxation, and one designed to arrest the flow of landlord capital on to small holdings. It had been alleged that the Small Landholders Bill had been adequately discussed, because it occupied twenty-two days in Grand Committee, and that nothing could be gained by further discussion, because the whole of the Party opposite had a closed mind on the subject, and were not open to conviction. Whatever might be the case as to the amount of time devoted to the discussion in detail of the Bill, the important fact remained that large blocks of it went through the Committee stage without any discussion whatever. The consequence was that many Amendments were never reached, and it was quite evident therefore that the Bills had not been adequately discussed. If the passing of these Bills through that House was meant as a serious attempt at legislation, and if it was really desired that they should go upon the Statute-book, was it not reasonable that, although they might dispose in some such method as was proposed, of such parts of the Bill as had been discussed, some provision should be made that those portions which had not been touched upon at all should receive some discussion? Otherwise they went through the House without any real expression of the opinion of Members upon a very large proportion of the measure. If the object was not to put them upon the Statute-book, but merely to fill the proverbial cup, he had no objection to the proposal, and he thought the Bills would form a beverage to pour into that cup which the other House would have very great justification in refusing to swallow in their present form.

wished to say a few words as one who had a great distaste for the guillotine. He could instance that by the fact that he had addressed two questions to the Prime Minister last Session from which they learned that the Government were considering plans to avoid as far as possible the use of closure by compartment. All the objections that had been raised to the discussion of the Scottish Small Holders Bill last session as inadequate were due to the fact that the guillotine was employed—the best Parliamentary weapon then in existence. But this Motion seemed to stand differently from any other guillotine Motion that had ever been proposed. It was not a Motion for the infringement of the liberties of the House, but one for their protection. Could any hon. Member honestly say that in his opinion it would be to the interests of the House to spend a large portion of the session once again in discussing two Bills that had already been discussed. Supposing that the discussion last year was inadequate, by going over the clauses that were inadequately discussed did anyone think the discussion would thus become more adequate? There would simply be a repetition of the same Amendments, the same speeches and the same results. The hon. Member for Glasgow University objected to the two Bills, one of which he said was, and the other was not, adequately discussed, being considered in the same guillotine Resolution. Both Bills, apart from their merits and the treatment they had received, stood to-day in the same category, because both had been discussed and passed through that House, and therefore it was fitting that they should both receive the same treatment in order that they might be sent to obtain adequate discussion in another place. It had been again and again said upon the other side that these Bills were never intended to become law, and were merely useful for filling up the cup. Was it impossible to persuade hon. Members opposite that there was no necessity to fill up the cup of the House of Lords? Their case against the House of Lords seemed to him to be an obvious one. It was simply and solely that the people of this country were denied Liberal or Labour Government when or if they voted Liberal or Labour in the same sense that they could have Conservative Government when they voted Conservative. Political history, both modern and recent, gave ample evidence of this contention, and he was perfectly confident that when the Prime Minister went to the country to ask for their judgment he would find that no process of filling up the cup had been required to prove an obvious proposition. He was an English Member representing an English agricultural constituency, and he wanted this Bill to pass because it would provide small holdings for the people of Scotland. He knew that the English Small Holdings Act had been a great success. Did he know anything of Scotland he would in his ignorance have suggested that the Scottish smallholder would be very well served with the English Small Holdings Act, but he did not know anything about Scotland, and just as they, English Members, obtained for their constituencies an English Small Holdings Act which they considered advantageous, so he was anxious that Members representing Scotland should obtain for their constituencies that Bill which in their almost unanimous opinion they considered to be to the advantage of their constituents. No one could fail to have been struck by the large number of views raised as to the opinions in Scotland on the merits of this Bill. The right hon. Member for Shropshire said Scotsmen did not like it. The Leader of the Opposition also knew that Scotland very strongly condemned the measure. The hon. Member for Leith Burghs also said Scotland did not like the Bill. But it was remarkable that not one of these gentlemen happened to have been returned for a Scottish constituency whose inhabitants would directly profit by the Small Holders Bill. Although one ought to be deferential to the opinions of experts such as the hon. Member for Leith Burghs, there could be no reason to doubt that the right person to approach such a subject as this was the man who had been returned by a Scottish constituency which was to profit by the Bill, and who had reason to know more accurately than anybody else what would be of advantage to him in his constituency. Scottish Members were almost unanimous in saying that the Scottish Small Holders Bill was best calculated to produce Scottish small holders. For that reason everybody interested in small holdings ought to support the Bill, and if they desired its passage it was surely almost preposterous to ask that they should go over again the weary course of last Session and debate what had been debated, which would delay the passage, not only of that Bill but of a large number of other reforms which they were all desirous of seeing passed. There was very little sympathy in the country for those who protested against the guillotine. The voter read his daily paper and knew all that there was to be known and had thought all that there was to be thought about the Bill after reading a leader on it in the Daily Mail. The country was always impatient of prolonged discussions in that House. It therefore behoved the House to be particularly careful about the curtailment of discussion on any topic of general interest such as this, but he could not feel that any Member was really in earnest in thinking that anything either in free discussion or in the Amendment of the Bill could be gained by doing over again what had been done. He could not but believe that the only result of such a course would be to curtail discussion of other measures for which there was an urgent demand. All that this had taught them was that the sooner that careful consideration, which the Prime Minister and the Government were now undertaking for doing away largely if not wholly with the cumbrous unscientific method of the guillotine, reached a point at which the House could take action, the better for proper and adequate discussion of their measures.

said he wanted to draw attention to one or two inconsistencies in the somewhat curious arguments which had been used by supporters of the, Government in favour of the guillotine Resolution. Some said the Scottish Bills had been fully discussed in the House last Session; others that it was true the Scottish Bills had not been discussed in the House, but that they had been discussed in Scotland and that was sufficient. The Chancellor of the Exchequer justified the action of the Government in sending these Bills to Grand Committee on the ground that it was better than a discussion in the House because one of the measures applied only to Scotland, therefore it only required discussion by Scottish Members. The right hon. Gentleman must have forgotten, however, that the Land Values Bill was treated in the same way as the Small Landholders Bill, although it was stated over and over again that later on the principle of the Land Values Bill was to be applied to the south of the Tweed as well as to the north. If that were so he failed to see why the principle should be discussed solely by Scottish Members and what justification the right hon. Gentleman had for stating that such a discussion was as good as a discussion by the whole House. The thing was manifestly absurd. He believed the Government had other reasons for re-introducing the Small Landholders Bill. From whatever point of view they looked at it they were bound to come to the conclusion that it was desired in the form proposed simply as a weapon to be used against the House of Lords. They were told last year over and over again that Scottish agriculturists, especially in the lowlands of Scotland, desired the measure, but he failed to see how that could be so. The Scottish Chamber of Agriculture had declared itself unanimously against it. If right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite were really so desirous of bringing in the measure in a form which would carry with it the greatest good to the people of Scotland, surely they should have taken some account of the resolutions in opposition to it that had been passed at meeting after meeting of agriculturists in the lowlands of Scotland. However much hon. Members opposite desired to see the measure upon the Statute Book they could not deny that there was a great division of opinion in Scotland upon the subject. Something should have been done to meet that opposition. On the other hand if a good Bill had been brought in, it might have passed in another place and from the Government's point of view that would never do. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had declared that the reason the Bill had not passed last session was because of the iniquitous action of another place. If that were so, why did the Government seek to introduce the measure again this session in precisely the same form. Was the House of Lords likely to change its mind in so short a time? Surely, if the Government desired so earnestly to help the people of Scotland it should bring in a measure which would not run so great risk of rejection by the House of Lords. There was one other point. The Prime Minister had excused his guillotine Motion on the ground that these Bills had been adequately discussed as far as the Commons were concerned last session, and that it was the Government's desire now to give the House of Lords an adequate opportunity of considering the measures. If that were so, why had not the Bill been introduced this session in the House of Lords? The whole thing came back to his first point. Whichever way they looked at it they were bound to come to the conclusion that the Government's whole motive for introducing the Bills word for word as they left the House last session was simply that they might be used as a weapon against the House of Lords. He was certain, however, that neither the people of this country nor the people of Scotland would support the Government on so transparent a device.

said an hon. Member on the other side of the House had pointed out that this Resolution was unprecedented, in that it comprised identical guillotine proposals with respect to two Bills. That led him to ask whether the Bills were so similar in character that they should be treated in exactly the same manner. The two Bills were entirely different in character. If a period of three days was enough for one why should it be enough for the other? He had come to the conclusion that the decision to give each Bill three days had been come to in a slap-dash fashion without adequate consideration. The same hon. Member had stated that he was in favour of this procedure for all Bills. He did not think that even this revolutionary House of Commons would be prepared for that. The proposal in this Resolution was against constitutional procedure as they had been accustomed to regard it. Erskine May said that Parliamentary procedure was interrupted by a prorogation. Surely then if a Bill failed to become law during a particular session, when the next session came on it became a new matter, and they had no right to try and shorten debate upon it because it had been thoroughly discussed in the previous session. Of course the reply to that argument might be that just as the King could do no wrong, Parliament could do no wrong if it chose to pass a Resolution dealing with the matter. Still the constitutional law did stand that if a session concluded without a Bill becoming law the matter ended there, and when the next session came round, if the Bill was re-introduced, the House was entitled to re-discuss it thoroughly in all its stages. So much for Parliamentary procedure; but after all he supposed that the broad question was whether justice was being done in this matter. He ventured to doubt it. At the beginning of last session when the new Grand Committees were set up they certainly were led to believe that no contentious Bill would be sent upstairs, but would be discussed on the floor of the House. No sooner, however, had that promise been made than it was broken. This Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill was one of the most contentious measures introduced last session. It involved the whole question of procedure in regard to land tenure in Scotland, yet it was sent upstairs to a Grand Committee and ordinary Members heard nothing of what was going on there, as the proceedings were not reported. He was interested in land in Scotland as well as in England, and he knew no more of what happened upstairs in regard to this Bill than the man in the moon; and scores and scores of hon. Members were in exactly the same position. Therefore, he did not think they had been fairly dealt with, when the Government began by breaking their promise and now proposed to adopt this wholly unprecedented procedure. This Government would not go on for ever; he did not suppose that the most sanguine Member on the Government side of the House would deny that the trend of opinion in the country was turning and that in a short time it might happen that those now in opposition would sit on the Government Benches. That was just as sure as day followed night. And what would happen? They would be inclined to retaliate upon those at present in power. Hon. Gentlemen on the Government Benches must not then complain, if the same measure which they had meted out was in turn meted out to them. If he spoke for a moment on the question of tactics it was only because the Prime Minister treated the manner in which he was proceeding with regard to both the Bills mentioned in the Resolution as a matter of tactics. The Government wanted to hurry the Bills into another place, but what were they going to gain by that? An hon. Member on the Government side had said: "Let us hurry through the Small Land Holders Bill as quickly as possible." And what reason did he give? "Because the Bill was dead; because it was a corpse." They wanted to fill up the cup of the iniquities of the House of Lords. But could they not see that instead of filling up the cup of the House of Lords they were only filling up their own cup or, if he might complete the metaphor of the hon. Member, they were only filling up their own coffin, and why? Because Scotland did not want the Bill. The agriculturists of Scotland did not want it. Prom his own standpoint he held that the Scottish landed interest—whether represented by landlords or tenant farmers—did not want the whole landed system of Scotland upset, seeing that it had served them in the past better than any other system could have done. Moreover, the proposed system had ruined Ireland and before it was finished might cost the taxpayers of the country £200,000,000 to get rid of. What was the hurry from the Government's own point; of view? Were they so anxious to get on with the rest of the legislation for the session? Were they wildly desirous of reaching the Licensing Bill? Little birds sometimes sang falsely, but little birds were intimating in strong tones that there was not complete unanimity in the Government or amongst their supporters on that Bill. Were they so anxious to reach the Education Bill or the Roman Catholic University for Ireland Bill, or the discussions on the Navy? Therefore he would have thought that from the point of view of tactics the Government ought to spend as many days as they possibly could over these two Bills, on the principle of "lingering sweetness long-drawn out." In any case they were only marching to their own funeral. The Bills would undoubtedly be thrown out, or largely amended, in another place, and therefore there was no necessity for this exceptional Resolution. They did not suggest the adoption of the system of carrying over Bills from one session to another, but tried to arrive at the same conclusion by a sidewind. He believed that the boomerang which the Government had thrown into the air would fall back disastrously on their own heads.

congratulated the hon. Member for York on his speech, with the exception of one point. He thought the hon. Member made a great mistake when he told hon. Gentlemen opposite that they would probably receive the same measure which they meted out now to those in Opposition when places were changed and the Unionists returned to power. They were men of principle on that side of the House and had, therefore, a great respect for the rights and privileges of the House of Commons. And although he was only a a humble back-bencher, he could assure hon. Gentlemen that they would not be led away by the bad example of the Prime Minister and those who were going to support him to-morrow. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, who was private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, gave three reasons why he should support the Resolution. First of all, because he was against the guillotine. But if ever there was a measure which was going to be forced through the House by the guillotine, it was this Resolution. The hon. Member said that he had had a satisfactory conversation with the Prime Minister, who assured him that he was considering a plan which would avoid the necessity of the guillotine. But the Prime Minister had told them that afternoon that he had been unable to devise any scheme which would do away with the guillotine; therefore, the first argument of the hon. Gentleman fell to the ground. The second argument of the hon. Gentleman was that when he talked to the constituencies about the privileges and rights of the House of Commons the constituencies did not care; that, in fact, it was rather difficult to find an elector who cared about them. Surely if the hon. Gentleman had studied the utterances of his Leader he would know that the Prime Minister, in his election address, stated that the late Government had by the unprecedented use of their unrestricted power, abused the procedure of the legislature, impaired its authority and reduced it so far as was in their power into a machine for registering the decrees of the Executive. Therefore, it was quite evident that the Prime Minister did not in 1906 share the views of his supporter, that the electorate as a whole paid no attention, or did not care whether or not the rights of the House of Commons were curtailed and the legislature reduced to a machine to register the decrees of the Executive. Sometimes words came home to roost, and he must say that he thought this was an instance of that fact, because what did this Motion mean except that the legislature was to be converted into a machine to register the decrees of the Executive? The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire said he did not pay much attention to the position taken up by the hon. Member for Leith Burghs, because his constituency would not benefit by the Bill, and he thought that the votes of hon. Members who sat for constituencies which would benefit by it and who would gain advantages for themselves ought to be considered. It came to this, therefore, that they were not to consider whether a measure was right for the country as a whole, but whether any Member whose constituency would gain some advantage by it, supported it. Was that the doctrine of the great Radical Party? He must confess, and he said it with great humility, that he had not any opinion of Radical ideas, but he did not think that they were so low as to avow that their object was to find out what any particular electorate wanted and give it to them.

did not want to interrupt the hon. Baronet, but he wished to point out that he had grievously misunderstood his argument on all the three points he had dealt with.

said he should be glad if the hon. Member would correct him in any way. The speech of the hon. Member for Leicester was heralded with great triumph by the statement that the principle that he had to consider was whether or not the rights of the minority were going to be affected. If they were affected, then the Labour Party would stand to a man against oppression. Then he found all of a sudden that this was not going to interfere with the rights of the minority, and therefore the Labour Party were not concerned to take up that attitude. What were the rights of the minority if the power to discuss a measure for which they did not care was taken away from them? They had no other Tights in that House, except rights of discussing. He remembered Sir William Harcourt, who was a great Parliamentarian, saying that the meaning of the word "Parliament" was that it was the debating house of the nation, but hon. Members opposite, and the Labour Party especially, seemed to think that the House of Commons was a machine to turn out legislation which would benefit their particular supporters. It never was anything of the sort. It was a place where measures should be discussed and where Members should meet together and debate all the proposals of interest, not to one particular party of the community, but to the country as a whole. The hon. Member for the Newton Division said that he went down to his constituency, and they said: "Why are you so slow in the House of Commons; why do you not get on quicker? "He replied:" It is the Parliamentary machine which gets on so slowly," and then he was received with these words: "Why do not you smash it?" That was exactly what this Motion was going to do—smash the machine; and that was why they on that side, who were Parliamentarians and great admirers of the Mother of Parliaments, were opposed to any such Resolution. The hon. Member for Leicester appealed to those Members who were business men, and asked what business man would say that a discussion which took twenty-two days in Committee was not sufficient. The reply to that was that there were only eighty-five members of the Committee, and 670 Members of the House. If a board of business men was going to consider a matter which affected the whole undertaking, they would not refer it to a sub-committee. This was one of the most important questions that could be brought before the House of Commons, and it referred to a Bill for revolutionising the whole land system of Scotland. It was therefore absolutely necessary that such a Bill should be discussed. He had the honour of being a member of the Committee, and he ventured to say that the supporters of the Government occupied as much time in discussion as the Opposition. On one day, for thirteen or fourteen speeches made by Radical Members, only seven or eight were made by the Opposition. Some of the supporters of the Government took a strong line and said they did not like the Bill, and would have nothing to do with it, and he hoped to find that consistency for which he thought the Radical Party were so" well known. But he was disappointed, as they did not vote, and on one occasion the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty voted for the closure on his own Amendment. The Leader of the Opposition had a copy of the Bill in which the portions of it which were closured were underlined in red ink. He had looked at it, and refreshed his memory, and he found that the closure was applied to nearly all of the most important provisions of the measure. They were promised a discussion on certain portions of the Bill later on, but did not get it, as those parts were also closured without debate. He thought he had proved to every reasonable man that there was no such thing as free discussion upstairs in Committee. An hon. Member who spoke from the Labour Benches made an attack upon the Unionist Members for going behind the bar of the Grand Committee and communicating with one legal gentleman who was looking up references. Why should they not? What about the officials of the Department who did not sit behind the bar but at the table in the Committee-room, beside the right hon. Gentleman, and who were paid public money to be there? At all events, they paid their one man with their own money and not out of public funds. The hon. Member for Cambridgeshire argued that as the Small Holdings Bill had been successful in England, it was right to have this Bill, which differed from it in every principle, in Scotland. That seemed to him a most ludicrous argument, and after all the hon. Member must first show that the Small Holdings Bill had been a success in England. The impression of people in the agricultural districts was that they were going to get land for nothing and that the State were going to pay their rates and taxes for them. When they found that nothing of the sort was the case, hon. Gentlemen would not be received with such cheers in their constituencies as they had hitherto been. He thought he had given substantial reasons why this Motion should not be passed, and he believed that if they had a vote by ballot upon it, it would not be carried.

said that in 1902 the Chancellor of the Exchequer, speaking in that House, quoted the late Mr. Gladstone on this very subject, Mr. Gladstone said very justly that the majority must prevail, but that still an equally important thing was the manner and the spirit in which the majority should prevail. He thought that quotation was a very good guide to them now, and that they should approach the consideration of this Motion very much in that kind of spirit. He would draw the attention of the House to this further fact, that on that occasion the present Prime Minister laid down certain principles which should guide them in considering this very matter. He was then dealing with a proposal to closure a debate on a certain measure, but to-day he had brought in a Motion which would automatically shut out discussion on two Bills at once—a kind of right-and-left shot. This, no doubt, would satisfy his supporters more than it would the rest of the country. The Prime Minister then laid down some principles for the guidance of the House. They ought, he said, in examining the Motion first of all to consider its texture and nature. Well, many who looked at the texture and nature of these Bills, which technically they had not seen but which they knew something about owing to the slight provision made for their discussion last year, were not by any means enamoured of them. They considered them revolutionary in their nature, and by their texture calculated to set up that very unsatisfactory state of things which at present existed in Ireland, namely, dual ownership. The Government recognised that in Ireland dual ownership was a curse, and were attempting to deal with it. It was set up in comparatively recent times and everybody had already seen the immense evil which could result from such a mischievous proceeding. Yet the right hon. Gentleman proposed in the texture and nature of one of these Bills to set up dual ownership in a country where it did not now exist, save in the crofting areas. He proposed to extend the principle to areas in which there was no demand for it, and where it would only result in inflicting a similar curse to that which it had inflicted in Ireland—a curse which would have to be dealt with in the future by legislation as unsatisfactory and objectionable in character as the Irish legislation of recent years. The House was also told that they ought to consider the origin of the Bills. They did not like them even when they considered their origin. They considered, and they were justified in saying they considered, that the origin of these Bills was to be found in party spite. His right hon. friend the Leader of the Opposition had adduced conclusive arguments and conclusive proofs that these measures were brought before Parliament last year, and were to be brought before Parliament this year, simply for the purpose of picking a quarrel with another place. His right hon. friend had said, and in his opinion with justice, that these measures were not intended to pass; that they were window-dressing measures and merely intended to destroy the good understanding which had hitherto existed between the representatives of the people of this country and the House of Lords. Hon. Members also recognised that in their origin and their character these Bills were socialistic, and for that reason, if for no other, they considered it was unjust and wrong that they should be asked to give them the exceptional facilities which they desired to obtain for their consideration by the application of the guillotine. The Prime Minister also pointed out to the House that they ought to consider the feeling the Bill raised. They had had sufficient illustrations from Lord Rosebery of what the feeling of the country was with regard to the Small Landholders (Scotland) Bill. The measure last year was condemned root and branch by the noble Lord, who contributed more than anyone else in the country to its being rejected. The feeling in the Lowlands was that this provision was not wanted; they did not want the curse of dual ownership. In the opinion of many hon. Members the feeling raised by these two measures did not warrant the course proposed by the right hon. Gentleman. They were also invited to consider the urgency of the matter, but the most earnest supporter of the Government would not claim that there was any urgency for these Bills. There was no apparent urgency except that this procedure would enable the right hon. Gentleman to come to close grips with the other House, a thing he was apparently not anxious to do. Hon. Members were also exhorted to consider the evil consequences of delay. The right hon. Gentleman and those associated with him might consider that there would be some evil in delay, but others thought the longer the delay the better it would be for all concerned. If these measures were not intended to pass, a certain amount of delay would not affect them much, and if they did pass they would only do harm. The last word of guidance which fell from the right hon. Gentleman was that they should consider in a matter of this kind the nature of the obstruction which had made it necessary to bring forward such a Motion. The measures not having bean before the House, hon. Members had not had an opportunity of looking at them or considering them, and did not know if their provisions were identical with those which the House had a cursory glance at last year. Therefore, it could not be claimed that there was great urgency on the ground of obstruction. There had been no obstruction last year in the consideration of these Bills. There had been no opportunity of obstruction because they were so rushed through the House that hon. Members had no opportunity of discussing them, and many of the principles of the measures were not discussed in detail on any occasion. Therefore, upon the principles which the right hon. Gentleman himself laid down in 1902, all the reasons for the necessity of his Motion fell to the ground. And further, to quote the words of the Prime Minister—

"Although on those grounds no case had been made for this Motion, it was intended to inflict this grievous blow on the privileges of Parliament on its account."

That was on account of these two Bills. In respect to the question to which he had referred, namely, the Motion before the House in 1902, and—if it applied to that Motion it equally applied to the Motion now before the House—the President of the Board of Trade said—

"It suggests the termination of the debate by violent measures."

He could not do better before sitting down than quote the closing words of the Prime Minister in his speech in 1902. The right hon. Gentleman said—referring to the present Leader of the Opposition—

"What is his cure for the ineffectiveness and impotence of Parliament? It is to suspend the privileges of the House of Commons. It is to institute government by executive decree, it is to take away the powers of Parliament."

Yet the right hon. Gentleman now came down to the House, with no ground at all to warrant his action, to bring before the House a complicated Motion, the effect of which would be to bring about exactly the state of things which he, in 1902, said ought never to obtain in Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman by means of this Motion would cripple freedom in debating measures of far-reaching importance: measures which were calculated from a socialistic point of view to do a large amount of mischief; and which, if once placed upon the Statute-book would result in such an amount of mischief in Scotland, as had already been brought about in Ireland, and destroy the peace of that at present peaceful and prosperous country.

I beg to move that the debate be now adjourned.

rose to call attention to the present laws with regard to the registration of voters for Parliamentary and other purposes, and to move "That, in the opinion of this House the complexity and limitations of the laws regulating the registration of voters deprive large numbers of persons otherwise qualified to vote, of such right, and, therefore, it is urgently necessary that immediate steps be taken for the amendment of these laws." He said that the subject to which he desired to draw the attention of the House was not one which he could claim to be a new one nor did he expect he could put any novelty into it. It was one which had engrossed the attention of the House on many occasions, and while, perhaps, there had been some slight alteration from time to time in the registration laws of the country, there had been no drastic or far-reaching improvement in them from the point of view of those who desired simplicity. He hoped his Resolution would receive some amount of support from hon. Members opposite, because he knew they were keenly anxious that above all things, electoral reforms, whether in election laws or in the qualifications or the registration of voters, should be discussed not from a local standpoint but from the point of view of applying to the whole country. As he intended to deal with the question on that footing he expected that the Resolution would receive warm acceptance on the other side of the House. They had first of all to take their minds back to consider what was the object of the registration laws of the country. A simple definition would be to place upon the Parliamentary and other registers of voters all those persons who were duly qualified by the various qualifying or enfranchising Acts, and that this should be done by a system which was outside all party influence and control. So far back as 1868 a very important Committee had sat, over which Sir William Harcourt presided; he thought the Member for the Forest of Dean was perhaps the only Member of the House who was a Member of that Committee, and the definition as to the objects of registration which were put in the Report of that Committee was the clearest and most precise that could be given. It was—

"The registration of voters is the business of the State, and ought to be placed as far as possible beyond the influence alike of the ignorance or apathy of the citizens, and the interested action of political agents."

Forty years had elapsed, and that ideal had not yet been realised. Some things had been done since then. He did not wish to ignore the important labours of the Committee which sat in 1878 and led to the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act of that year. But there was much more to be done. Some of the cases which had been tried under the Registration law were of the most amusing character. There had been a test case on a very much debated point in the Revision Court as to whether a man who had as part of a dwelling a bed-room, which was called a cubicle, was entitled to a vote, and in the case which settled that he had not they found that the applicant had a cubicle which was 12 ft. by 8, which was really a bedroom, and which had a door leading into a passage, and a window looking out into the open air. He was not qualified to go on the voters' list as an inhabitant of a dwelling house because the sides of the cubicle were only 7 feet high—that left a space of 5 feet between the top of the cubicle and the ceiling—and because he had the use in common of the passage, the ventilator, and the atmosphere which was made pure by the ventilator. Had he had an apartment the sides of which reached up to the ceiling and a more impure atmosphere he might have qualified. That was one of the vices of the law as it was at present. And then there were the serious and much disputed cases with regard to medical relief. It was time they got rid of such things as those. But the most important case, and that which raised in the clearest possible manner the question of the dwelling house apart from the lodger, was the famous case of Kent v. Fittal, which was known as the latchkey case. Anyone who had had practical experience in connection with the Registration Courts would say that the issue put before the Appeal Court in that case raised some of the best issues that could be raised and the decision come to was the clearest possible. A man named Frank Herbert occupied during the qualifying period an unfurnished room in a house at Devonport, for which he paid 3s. 8d. a week rent. The importance of the amount of rent was very great. He could not have applied to be put on the list as a lodger because a rental of £10 was a necessary qualification. It was a large house, the occupier of which sub-let to a number of tenants, himself occupying the lower portion of the house. There were no fewer than four others occupying in the same way as Herbert, and the point was put that he had a separate dwelling because he inhabited a certain part of the house exclusively apart from the common user of passages and other things. The case having been decided unfavourably to the tenant went to the Court of Appeal and the Master of the Rolls gave a very clear definition. He said—

"On the whole it seems to me that the weight of authority in both countries is clearly in favour of the view that the fact that the landlord lives on the premises, under the conditions described in the ease before us, does not exclude from the franchise as an inhabited Occupier of a dwelling house a resident in a part of the premises who in other respects complies with the conditions imposed by the Act."

His colleagues agreed and both pointed out the invidious position in which a tenant would be if the mere fact of the landlord living in the house disqualified a man except there was some distinct control on the part of the landlord. He knew the question of control from practical experience. Lord Justice Romer drew the illustration of a man having two houses. Part of one in which he did not live became vacant and he moved into it. Up to this the persons occupying the various parts of the house occupied a dwelling house under the Act. Was the mere fact of the landlord's moving into the house, occupying himself only a portion which had recently been sublet, at once to alter the qualification of all the persons who had lived in it previously, their condition of living remaining identically the same as before? Lord Justice Mathew drew the illustration of a man who lived in and moved out of a house. In that case the lodgers became occupiers while if he moved in they became disqualified. Lord Justice Mathew put a very cogent point with regard to this discussion. He agreed with his colleagues and he distinctly said—

"The object of the Acts of 1867 and 1878 was to give to the occupant of a part of a dwelling house the franchise which was previously confined to the occupant of an entire dwelling house."

He believed that was the intention of the law. The idea in the famous latchkey case was that a man having a latchkey and being able to go into the house could at once get free access to the rooms that he occupied and therefore had control of the dwelling in which he lived. In the bulk of buildings let out under these conditions a person who took unfurnished apartments had entire control of them the moment he shut his room door. The fact of some little common service over the parts that they used in common ought not to disqualify. He would like to find a lawyer who would give in a case outside registration a decision that a landlord could go and break down the door of an apartment. He had not control to do that for any other purposes than registration, but this construction had robbed many of the industrial classes of their right to get on the register. After inquiry from the landlord the town clerk of West Islington placed 2,000 of these people on the main list as occupiers. There was no party inquiry, but he was simply following up the ideal set in the passage he had read from the Report of 1868, stating that it was the duty of the local authority to place those people on the register independent of party. They were objected to, and the revising barrister, Mr. Paul Strickland, spent four days hearing six cases. One would have thought he was trying a question involving some immense amount of property or the life of a subject. To him it was most amusing that the revising barrister should take four days over cases in which all he had to decide was whether the lard lord had some control as was laid down in the case of Kent v. Fittal. The revising barrister adjourned the Court, and did not appear again, but sent a deputy, Mr. Webster, who came to the Court and said that unless the person objected to and the landlord appeared in defence he would strike the names out, and forthwith he struck 2,000 names out. Now what was this revising barrister asking for? First of all he wanted the testimony of the tenant and then of the landlord. That meant that he wanted 4,000 people to come up to the Court. He would like to know how long the revising barrister would have had to sit to hear all those cases. That was only one action. There were 1,400 persons on the register who had been put on the year previously under the latchkey decision. They had moved and claimed for successive occupation which they had a perfect right to do having been put on as occupiers of dwelling houses. They claimed in succession, and in every one of those cases a printed statement signed by the landlord was produced stating that the applicant had full control. What was the result? The whole of these names were again struck off. No less than 3,400 persons were struck off who could not claim as lodgers. And these electors were debarred from participating in an election which took place while they were off the register. He was quite tired of the working classes being harrassed in this way, for no other class was harrassed in the same manner. In the cases he had mentioned the conditions laid down by the revising barrister were absolutely impossible for anyone to follow. He had been told of another case which was a rather serious one. The town clerk placed the latchkey voters on the list, but he put a distinguishing mark on the register against their names. He would like to know whether town clerks had power to put any such distinguishing marks on the register. He might add that in this particular case the revising barrister struck the names out. He considered that the door of the apartment occupied by those people roomed off was as sacred to them as the street door was to the superior landlord; and, unless there was some definite agreement which did not exist in ordinary hiring, the landlord could not enter the room he had let without obtaining the ordinary powers of the law. The Return of Parliamentary Voters for 1907 showed that there were 163,774 lodgers in England and Wales on the register. Let the House imagine what the number would be if they had them under another definition. Even that total did not represent the full total who ought to be on, because they had no successive occupation, and every time they moved they had again to go through the probationary period. If they were admitted to a qualification under a more simple definition, there would be a much larger number of them on the register. It might be said, "Surely they did not want to reduce the money qualification below £10 a year." Let them take, for example, the ordinary model dwellings or flats. Every portion was separately assessed as a dwelling house, and it was well known that there were many eases where the rent for that flat was as low as 2s. 6d per week. Then there was the case of the agricultural labourer. They did not pay an excessively high rent, but their houses were separately assessed and carried the full qualification of an inhabited dwelling house. Therefore, the £10 a year qualification for lodgers was one of those things which ought to be swept away. Scotland had different machinery in regard to lodgers. He thought in what he had said he had made out a case to justify the amendment of the law. He had taken only typical cases. Some of his hon. friends had said that his Resolution was not sufficiently definite. He would remind hon. Members that he had sat in this House years ago, and he had had some experience of attempts at registration reform, and therefore he approached the question with more modest ideas as to what could be done. He would like to see some attempt at codification. He would probably be told that that was a very big order indeed. He knew it was rather a difficult thing to deal with some 108 Acts of Parliament, some of which went back to the Henrys, but nevertheless, he believed that a Bill of that kind would be acceptable to all parties in the House. He was not pressing the Government to bring in a big Bill. He remembered the Bills of 1893 and 1894, both of a comprehensive character, dealing with this question from different standpoints; but considering the high pressure of public life to-day, he was more inclined to ask for some small reform. He thought at least that the Government might consider whether they would not be able to get through some small Bill which would give them the benefit of the point decided in Kent v. Fittal and provide them with a clear definition of an inhabited dwelling house. The registration qualifying period at the present time was an absolute scandal. The facts were that the shortest time for anyone to get on the register was eighteen months, and it might be two and a half years. The average was two years. If they had a six months qualification the shortest period would be twelve months, the longest two years, and the average eighteen months. If they took the three months qualification, which he favoured, they could not get on under nine months. It might be twenty-one months. The average would be fifteen months, which was surely long enough. He was supposing that there would be no alteration in the present system of registration, but that they would simply amend the Act of Parliament with reference to the qualifying period, leaving the whole of the machinery as it existed at the present time. If time permitted he could show other anomalies. In a debate which took place in the early nineties the Leader of the Opposition said—

"There is absolutely no difference of opinion in respect to the desire to see the present long time which may elapse between the day when a man becomes qualified and the day when he is allowed to exercise his vote lessened."

The money still necessarily spent by voluntary political associations was very heavy indeed. In Scotland, he believed they managed their business easier than they did in England. He had seen figures which he was almost afraid to quote in regard to the enormous cost of registration work throughout the country. And yet, but for the work done by voluntary political associations under the present system the registers would be in a very crude condition indeed. Another reform which he desired was the making of the qualifying periods somewhat analogous. If a nonconformist minister changed his residence he could not get on to the register in his new district without waiting the full qualifying period, while the rector got on by virtue of succession when he moved to another place. The freeholder got on the register in three months. These were illustrations of the absurdities. Then there were anomalies arising out of distances which required reform. Any person having business premises in a city and living within twenty-five miles of it were qualified, while with the person under the same £10 qualification in other boroughs and counties, it was necessary to live within seven miles of the qualifying property. The advocators of the plural voter should see to their indentures. There was only one real remedy for the whole of this, viz., the simplification of the qualification. He thought he had said enough to justify him in moving this Resolution. He could not conceive that any person could wish to continue in existence the anomalies which now existed. He hoped to see the time when they would get rid of all these anomalies and, coming down to flesh and blood, make the human being qualified, and then they would have a better state of things.